Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s woeful mismanagement of the state agency that permitted a food “charity” to defraud the federal government of $250 million in Covid-19 subsidies came back to haunt him today.
The House Education and Workforce Committee subpoenaed Walz and Minnesota Commissioner of Education Willie Jett because the pair have not produced documents the committee requested that would explain how fraudsters stole the money.
One revelation after another has surfaced about Walz since Vice President and Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris imprudently picked the far-left governor as her running mate.
23 Convictions So Far
The trouble for the man called “Tampon Tim” — he signed a law to put menstrual products in boys’ restrooms in schools — began when the U.S. Justice Department indicted 47 individuals in what DOJ called the “largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date.”
The group that perpetrated the fraud was called Food for Our Future, which was supposed to provide free food to kids during the Deep-State engineered Covid panic. The Minnesota Department of Education distributed the federal funds.
But Food for Our Future was a looting operation that went from receiving $3.4 million in 2019 to hauling in $200 million in 2021.
The outfit “recruited individuals and entities to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout the state of Minnesota,” DOJ said in September 2022 when it indicted 47 fraudsters:
These sites, created and operated by the defendants and others, fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed. The defendants created dozens of shell companies to enroll in the program as Federal Child Nutrition Program sites. The defendants also created shell companies to receive and launder the proceeds of their fraudulent scheme.
To carry out the scheme, the defendants also created and submitted false documentation. They submitted fraudulent meal count sheets purporting to document the number of children and meals served at each site. The defendants submitted false invoices purporting to document the purchase of food to be served to children at the sites. The defendants also submitted fake attendance rosters purporting to list the names and ages of the children receiving meals at the sites each day. These rosters were fabricated and created using fake names. For example, one roster was created using names from a website called “www.listofrandomnames.com.” Because the program only reimbursed for meals served to children, other defendants used an Excel formula to insert a random age between seven and 17 into the age column of the rosters.
In June, five defendants were convicted in the scheme. Those verdicts brought the number of those found guilty to 23.
Subpoena Time
So now, the House committee wants to know what Walz and Jett were doing when Food for Our Future was robbing the taxpayers. Nothing, apparently, is the answer.
In the letter that accompanied the subpoena, GOP committee chief Virginia Foxx of North Carolina reminded Walz that he was responsible for the state education department and its activities.
“As the chief executive and the highest ranking official in the state of Minnesota, you are responsible for the MDE and its administration of [Federal Child Nutrition Programs],” she wrote.
Foxx also reminded Walz that the Minnesota education department received letters in November 2023 and June 2024 to produce documents related to the theft. Yet “documents we have received to date indicate the actions taken by you and other executive officers were insufficient to address the massive fraud,” she wrote.
Indeed, she continued, “statements in the press by you and your representatives indicate that you and other executive officers were involved, or had knowledge of, MDE’s administration of the FCNP and responsibilities and actions regarding the massive fraud.”
Jett received a similar letter. The documents his agency produced for the committee from his agency, Foxx wrote, don’t explain how his agency or USDA permitted the fraud.
Walz’s Lies
Walz might well think he won’t have to come clean because he’s a vice presidential candidate. And the committee has no guarantee he’ll produce the relevant documents. For all the committee knows, the documents might be “missing.”
Walz does, after all, have a long record of lying about his past.
Walz misrepresented his military service by claiming he retired as a command sergeant major for the Minnesota National Guard. In fact, he retired as a master sergeant.
As well, during a rant about gun control, he told an audience he had gone to war then later claimed he misspoke. In fact, Walz retired from the military to avoid a deployment to Iraq.
He has lied about drunk-driving arrest in 1995, and falsely claimed that he and his wife conceived their children through in-vitro fertilization.
Perhaps that record explains Walz’s insouciance to the $250 million fraud scheme.
The Covid panic, by the way, provided Walz the chance to ruin two bar owners. He went after one because she refused to shut down, pursuant to his Covid lockdown order. “They revoked my right to have a liquor license in my state for five years, which was later overruled, but I lost two restaurants because of it. I lost two different restaurants because of it, and I was fined over $300,000 for it,” Lisa Zarra told Fox News.
He ruined a second by permitting Floyd Hoax rioters to set Minneapolis ablaze. Bill Hupp’s bar went up in flames.
“He could have called [the guardsmen] in [but] he didn’t,” Hupp told the New York Post. “I didn’t have a drop of water put on my place. Not a drop of water for those three and a half days! Crazy. It’s [a] complete loss of leadership, totally.”
