A heated Senate hearing exposed allegations of a massive COVID-19 era fraud scheme involving millions in misallocated government funds, leading to a public confrontation between Senator Josh Hawley and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison regarding Ellison's alleged complicity.
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Senator Josh Holly and Minnesota
Attorney General Keith Ellison got into
a shouting match during a Senate hearing
on Thursday. The Senate Homeland
Security Committee hearing was over a
federal investigation into an alleged
fraud within Minnesota involving the
misappropriation of millions of dollars
in government funds primarily targeting
federal food, nutrition, and child care
programs. The confrontation started with
Holly questioning Ellison about his
actions surrounding the nonprofit
Feeding Our Future. The nonprofit was at
the center of a $250 million scheme to
allegedly defraud a child nutrition
program during the CO 19 pandemic. Let's listen.
listen.
>> Here's what you said. Let's take a look.
>> Obviously, you said it's not a question.
You said to them, "Send me the names of
all these folks who are investigating
them." you said to them, "Send me their
names and I'll take that list and I'll
call the person over at education who
was investigating them and say, "What's
going on? Why am I getting these
complaints?" Then he went on to say, "I
already have my team working on this.
What day should we get together to
discuss it again?"
The Center for the American Experiment,
a conservative Minnesota based
nonprofit, in April, released a 54minute
recording of two future criminal
defendants with ties defeating our
future during a meeting with Ellison on
December 2021. The Missouri Republican
during the hearing kept pressing Ellison
to accept that the Minnesota AG was
complicit in this fraud scheme that
resulted in the theft of federal funds.
Let's listen.
>> Why did you help him?
>> First of all, I didn't help them.
>> You did help?
>> No, I did not. I certainly didn't.
>> You're saying you didn't do anything for him?
him?
>> You You didn't You didn't
>> Well, wait a minute.
>> I already have my team working on this
again. That's not you.
>> I have I have my team My team assisted
with the information that led to the
prosecution and conviction of these people.
people.
>> No, you didn't. You didn't finger to
prosecute them. No, you did not. You
were federal prosecution.
>> You had Oh, BS. You had whistleblowers
coming to you as early as 2019.
>> You're the one talking BS.
>> Hey, listen. It's my time.
>> Holly then called for Ellison to resign
and be put behind bars to which
Minnesota Attorney General shot back.
Let's listen.
>> As early as 2019,
>> don't call me.
>> Whistleblowers came to Well, I should
call you a prisoner because you ought to
be in jail.
>> Well, see what you can call. 2019
whistleblowers came to you in your
office and referred to you fraud
allegations from feeding our futures and
you blew them off. You've been right at
the center of this fraud
and you've enabled it and sir you should resign
resign
>> and sir you should resign. I was
thinking the same thing about you.
>> This week got really hectic with
hearings. There's been a lot of yelling.
I'm I'm on the side of if anybody was
complicit in fraud, they should be
prosecuted. I'm also scaling back and
remembering the time that we're looking
at. It's it's a little frustrating that
we are so laser focused on Minnesota
when the country has been focused on
prosecuting a variety of criminals in in
all states that were committing
violations and fraud during COVID. Um I
think that it's warranted to look into
anybody who is committing fraud and
especially if they took donations, get
them out of here. I'm not opposed to
that. I I just think that this intense
overly focus on Minnesota when we need
to make sure that we're combing through
a variety of states is also
>> Yeah. I mean, I'll say the FBI does have
a a special unit that they are using to
investigate specific pandemic related
fraud. Um and that's why there were so
many indictments coming out of Minnesota
uh from the DOJ. There were 70 plus
various indictments and uh even
convictions. And I think that the reason
why Minnesota became sort of the main
target is because they were just finding
so much and it was concentrated in a
specific community which made it easier
to kind of trace all of the paper
trails. And then you had this added
element of well as well of the
politicians there taking donations from
the groups that were committing the
fraud and potentially helping them avoid
investigation or accountability. And
even worse in this case is that Keith
Ellison is the attorney general, right?
He is the top cop where the buck stops
in Minnesota. The buck absolutely stops
with him. So if he is turning a blind
eye to fraud or even promising to try to
get investigators off of their backs,
that is a huge affront to the taxpayers
of Minnesota and he absolutely should be
held accountable for that.
>> I look, I don't have a defense. I And
I'm not here to Right. Something that I
say all the time is that I can see right
from wrong. So, there's a lot of details
coming out of Minnesota um that I find
to be extremely alarming from the fact
that if you think that somebody
committed a crime, you're not looking
into them specifically because of their
race, that's a problem for me. We should
be looking into anybody that commits
fraud and there should not be a fear of
look doing so. I think that it's a
problem if the attorney general is
taking donations specifically from a
group that he may have been tipped off
about, that's a problem. And so I think
that part of the agreements with uh
across the aisle is that we want to get
more corruption out of politics. The
part that struck me the wrong way about
the entire Minnesota investigation was
the attack of the Somali people as a
whole as a result of what people that
were Somali descent that lived in
Minnesota did. And I think that there
are variety of Somali people that live
in America that don't commit fraud. And
I think what the president did is paint
with a broadstroke brush and make us
like untrusting of an entire country.
And I don't ever like that because I
think that that is not appropriate. But
when we look at officials that are doing
things that come on, there's too much
smoke over here. And and and Walsh also
said, you know, I dropped the ball. Just
in December, he tried to actually enact
some type of policy that actually was
going to really really target and look
into or assign people to look into the
fraud himself. And so 2025 was too late.
I'll give people COVID. I'll give
everybody they were scrambling. I'll
give you till 2022. But when you get
three years past it, I mean, we're well
out of the pandemic. Unacceptable. And
it should be reviewed. Well, and also in
Minnesota, the fraud started before the
pandemic because according to some
public reports, Attorney General Keith
Ellison was tipped off in 2019, so the
year prior. And I uh from my
understanding, there have been local
journalists who have been raising red
flags about this for a decade, if not
longer. And so, it was easier for them
to sort of skate by during the pandemic.
Maybe they were doing it at higher
levels than they were previously. But
it's pretty clear based on the timeline
of events that they had started this
back in probably 2010 to the 2013 area
continued on until they finally started
uh this special COVID fraud unit out of
the DOJ to try to investigate because
Minnesota was just like ah whatever.
>> Yeah. And it's unfortunate Minnesota has
a lot of explaining to do across the
board. Minneapolis, Minnesota. I mean,
they have a state and a city now that
has all of the nation's attention for a
variety of reason, whether it's the
immigration story that we just talked
about earlier today or the fraud that
led to some of this immigration, these
immigration tactics being used. So,
whoever takes um the governor position
there and whoever is the new leadership
is going to have a lot on their hands
and needs to be the right person in
order to kind of take away a lot of the
stain coming from, you know, both sides.
Whether it's the stain of the fact of
what happened and the recuperation from
incidents that just happened there in
the last few weeks, but also the stain
of like over not just overlooking a
variety of fraud cases for years. I
mean, so how the state moves forward is
going to be interesting to watch because
there's a lot to pick up the pieces from,
from,
>> right? And I know Republicans both for
the Senate and the governor's race feel
that this gives them a great opportunity
because obviously Minnesota is a lean
blue state. Um, hasn't really had much
Republican representation on the
statewide level. and they're hopeful
that this whole fraud scandal,
regardless of, you know, who's ends up
running in the in the Senate and
governor race, I know Amy Clolobachar um
is trying to get Tim Walls's seat. Uh
they feel like, okay,
>> the people in Minnesota have lost trust
in their public officials. They're
pretty much all Democrats. Maybe we can
run on this idea of being the cleanup
team. Um we'll see what happens. I mean,
it's still tough. It's an uphill battle
for them, but I I know that they're
probably going to be investing more than
they would have otherwise if this whole
story hadn't broken.
>> Yeah. If they ever had a leg to stand on
in a blue state, this would be this
would be the one.
>> Up next, a new report suggests that the
FBI spent several years gathering intel
on public figures without having a
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