WASHINGTON – They sat in the same room, questioned the same witnesses, and were nominally investigating the same subject.
But the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearing Wednesday on alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs was, in many ways, two different hearings running in tandem — each side telling an entirely different story to an entirely different audience.
Republicans, including Champaign County’s Jim Jordan, were methodically constructing a factual record of Democratic negligence and missed warnings of fraud by nonprofits in the state.
Democrats, including Shontel Brown of Warrensville Heights, barely engaged with that line of questioning. Instead, they focused on the federal government’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, gutted prosecutors’ offices, and president Donald Trump issuing pardons to people who committed fraud, even as Republicans claim to be outraged about fraud.
Neither side showed much interest in the other’s argument. They were, for the most part, talking to their bases.
The backdrop
The hearing, titled “Oversight of Fraud and Misuse of Federal Funds in Minnesota: Part II,” was the committee’s second session on what federal prosecutors have described as potentially the largest social services fraud scandal in American history.
The committee’s Republican chairman, James Comer of Kentucky, said federal prosecutors estimate that as much as $9 billion may have been stolen from just 14 Medicaid programs administered by the state of Minnesota. He said those programs cost taxpayers more than $18 billion since 2018 and investigators believe that half or more of that spending may have been lost to fraud.
He said that a single Minnesota-based nonprofit called Feeding Our Future alone involved nearly $300 million stolen from programs meant to feed children during the pandemic.
Comer also entered into the record an interim staff report from his committee titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion.” Wednesday’s hearing brought Walz, who is Minnesota’s governor, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison before the committee under oath for the first time.
The Republican hearing
For Comer and Jordan, the morning was about pinning specific administrative and political failures on Walz and Ellison. Their questions were prosecutorial in style — they wanted timelines, yes-or-no answers, and admissions.
Jordan honed in on a specific claim. In 2021, the state paused payments to Feeding Our Future amid fraud concerns — then restarted them about a month later. Walz had told the media the state was ordered to resume payments by a court. Jordan came prepared with what he said was proof that was false: a public statement issued by the very judge Walz had cited.
“This is from the court,” Jordan said, reading from a Ramsey County District Court statement. “Governor Tim Walz told the media that the Minnesota Department of Education attempted to stop payments because of possible fraud, but that a court order required payments to continue in April 2021. Next sentence: that is false.”
Jordan read further: the court “never ordered the Department of Education to resume payments to Feeding Our Future in April 2021, or at any other time.”
Walz held his ground, saying his agency’s lawyers had reached a different interpretation. “The attorneys at the Department of Education interpret that differently,” he said.
Jordan was having none of it. “So, either you’re lying or the court’s lying. And I’m just asking, which one is it?”
The Democratic hearing
The committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia of California opened not with fraud timelines but with images — a blood-stained car seat, photographs of detained children — and a recitation of violence he attributed to Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. He cited the shooting deaths of two people — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — by federal agents, and charged that “Donald Trump has unleashed chaos against innocent Americans and across Minnesota.”
Garcia asked Walz if the surge actually helped fight fraud. Walz said it did not.
“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” Walz told the committee. “Under the guise of combating fraud, the federal government has flooded Minnesota with masked, untrained and unaccountable agents who are wreaking havoc in our communities.”
Brown opened her questioning with a pointed challenge to the hearing’s legitimacy, questioning why, thirteen months into the Trump administration “this committee has failed to hold one hearing, or open one investigation to hold this president accountable.”
“Makes you wonder, are we the Oversight Committee or the Overlook Committee?” she quipped.
Then she turned the hearing’s own subject matter against the Republicans, asking Ellison to describe how the resignation of at least six prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota, “due to the chaos ICE caused” damaged the ability to prosecute fraud.
Ellison said more than six left, and one of those who resigned in protest was leading the prosecution of the Feeding Our Future defendants.
He described fraud enforcement as an interlocking system — state, county, and federal — and warned: “If the prosecutor’s numbers are depleted, you’re going to see worse behavior.”
Brown closed with a broader indictment of the Republican posture, citing Trump pardons for executives who committed fraud, such as former nursing home operator Joseph Schwartz, who pleaded guilty to a $38 million employment tax fraud scheme and was pardoned last year.
“What I believe is simple,” she concluded. “Whether you are a president, a billionaire, or a regular American who has committed fraud, you should be held accountable.”