House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told Just the News on Tuesday that Minnesota state employees are providing evidence that could lead to the federal prosecution of Gov. Tim Walz, offering sworn whistleblower testimony confirming the Democratic governor failed to act after they warned about massive taxpayer fraud involving the state’s Somali immigrant population.”That my friend should be enough for criminal charges. The man should be in cuffs,” Emmer said during a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
While Walz has vehemently denied wrongdoing and insisted he did not turn a blind eye to a fraud scheme that federal prosecutors predict could reach $9 billion, three GOP Minnesota state legislators told Congress last week that there were whistleblowers in state government willing to come forward to chronicle their efforts to alert the Walz administration to fraud and the subsequent retaliation they endured.
Emmer confirmed Tuesday those whistleblowers are now cooperating with investigators and taking an important step to give testimony under oath about their efforts to alert Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison.
“There are whistleblowers out there. Expect one or more of them to start going under oath or offering affidavits that are signed, affidavits under oath, that they not only told Tim Walz about the fraud while it was happening, but that Tim Walz ignored them and in many cases retaliated against them,” Emmer told Just the News.
That retaliation, Emmer said, included “threatening to blackball you from any future employment, threatening to take away your health benefits, threatening to take away your retirement benefits, and the list goes on.”
Emmer rattled off new statistics on what federal prosecutors have uncovered, including more than 90 indictments, mostly of Somali immigrants, $250 million in fraud in a single COVID-era food assistance program and $160 million in a taxpayer-supported housing assistance program managed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“The HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced he’s uncovered up to $84 million in eligible assistance during Biden’s final year, including …. improper assistance to 509 dead tenants. You got food, nutrition, housing, autism, Medicaid programs have all been defrauded under Tim Walz and Keith Ellison during seven years in office,” he said.
“And I fully expect the whistleblowers to confirm it further that Tim Walz knew about the fraud, and not only did not do anything about it, he retaliated against anyone who reported it,” he added.
Emmer’s comments came after bombshell testimony last week before the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee from three Minnesota state legislators who alleged Walz and his administration enabled some of the state’s now estimated $9 billion in taxpayer-funded social services fraud by suppressing some fraud reports, retaliating against whistleblowers and changing protocols to mask criminal behavior.
State Reps. Walter Hudson, Marion Rarick, and Kristin Robbins are Republican members of their legislature’s committee on fraud prevention, which has been investigating some of the same instances of fraud that have captured the national spotlight in the last several months.
Rarick in particular spoke about the pressure and opposition whistleblowers have said they have faced, saying a group of about 480 disenchanted current and former state Department of Health Services employees has grown to over 1,000 people across multiple state agencies. Those DHS employees started an account on X called Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary, and many have been more than willing to talk with the fraud prevention committee about what they have found and experienced.
“They have explained that they live in a constant state of fear of retaliation,” Rarick told the House committee, citing the example of Faye Bernstein reported by Newsweek.
Bernstein was a compliance specialist who had reported some “sloppy contracting practices” to Minnesota DHS officials and was later “escorted out of the building” and transferred involuntarily to another agency. She now discourages others from reporting fraud without concealing their identity, calling it “career suicide” and more.
Others that Rarick and fellow fraud prevention committee members have met with have backed up Bernstein’s story with anecdotes of their own, according to Rarick.
“In our face to face meetings with a group of whistleblowers, they revealed that retaliation now includes threats of being fired with cause, which means you do not get unemployment insurance in the state of Minnesota, being blacklisted from all state agencies… and then there was a veiled threat of the use of military intelligence against them,” Rarick said.
Some whistleblowers told committee members that pictures of their homes or cars were found in some of their personnel files and supervisors asked them questions like where their kids went to school and “where their bus stops are.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has publicly disparaged the whistleblowers who formed the X account, and she was on the legislative committee that held hearings on child care fraud before becoming the state’s lieutenant governor, according to Robbins.
The Center Square contributed to this report.
