American Experiment Podcast
Why are so many Minnesota high school graduates unable to read or do math at grade level? Does Tim Walz actually think he's going to be the next president of the United States? And why does he keep swearing so much?
These are the kinds of hard-hitting questions we get into every week on the American Experiment Podcast, where we unpack the week's biggest stories, interview Minnesota's movers and shakers, and "stop the tape" on clips of our state's most ridiculous elected officials.
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American Experiment Podcast
Episode 132 - THE WALZ-ELLISON REPORT: What they KNEW and WHEN
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WHAT Walz and Ellison knew about the FRAUD and WHEN they knew it....
Check out the American Experiment Podcast
A damning report from the U.S. House says Walz and Ellison knew about the fraud and did nothing, Minnesota’s national education ranking fell even further (somehow), and a murder in Mankato points to bigger problems with our justice system. On the back half, we unpack some breaking fraud news with Minnesota House Fraud Committee Chair Kristin Robbins.
QOTW: Do you think Walz and Ellison will ever face criminal consequences?!
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Welcome back to the American Experiment Podcast. Catherine, what do we have on the docket today? Well, this week a damning report from the U.S. House says that Walls and Ellison knew about the fraud and did nothing. Minnesota's national education ranking fell even further, somehow. And a murder in Mankato points to bigger problems with our justice system. On the back half, we unpack some breaking fraud news with Minnesota House Fraud Committee Chair Kristen Robbins. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_01If this is your first time joining us, welcome. Things are pretty crazy here in Minnesota, and we try to bring you a more sane perspective and take on things. As always, I am Grace Keating here with Catherine Johnson.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and our audience question for you guys today is about Governor Walls and Attorney General Keith Ellison. A lot of you have seen the report that's come out of the Comar Committee in the House, and we're gonna talk about it as our first story today. So hang with us, listen, and then let us know. Do you think Walls and Ellison have will ever face criminal consequences? Uh I don't know if the evidence is there or not. We want you to listen and decide what do you think? Is there evidence that they did something criminally wrong? And should we see them in handcuffs? Leave a comment on the YouTube page if you're listening on Spotify or Apple. Thank you for being here. Consider dropping a comment on our YouTube page.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I loved reading your guys' comments from last week. We'd asked, you know, what makes you proud to be a Minnesotan andor an American? And so many people were talking about, you know, getting chills growing up listening in history class to the stories that of the generations who came before us. And I can totally relate to that. So yeah, we love hearing from you guys, reading your responses. And I am very interested to see what you think of this week's question. Should we dive right in? We have so many fraud stories to get through today.
SPEAKER_03Let's do it. Before we do that, do you want to make a note of where Governor Walls is at this very moment? Because I didn't know this until Grace told me this morning, and I found it just sort of interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is kind of a fun, you know, pop quiz moment. Um, as you might remember, you know, Governor Walls dropped out of his re-election campaign earlier this year saying, you know, I'm gonna leave the campaign to other people. Clearly, you know, the state of Minnesota needs me to focus solely on fighting fraud. Um, so obviously this week he's in Austria um talking to other world leaders, other world leaders, he's talking to world leaders um about climate change. So if that's what you guessed, you were right. Where in the world is our governor? It's not in Minnesota fighting fraud, that's for sure. He's in Pennsylvania, he's in Texas, he's in Spain, he's in Austria. We should, it should be, we should have like a Where's Walls version of Where's Waldo? Right. And he's just decided to abdicate.
SPEAKER_03He's like, I'm done, I'm over. Well, when that exactly like you say, Grace, that was his entire point of dropping out. He wanted to focus on things here at home. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Do you think that was all at all inspired by the bad press that he's getting over the Comer report saying that he basically knew about the fraud and did nothing? I don't know. It's interesting. Like he's talking about climate change, really.
SPEAKER_03Uh huh. All right. Well, let's go into our first uh story, which is a fraud update. There's four stories we're gonna cover quickly because there's just as always a lot to talk about on the fraud front. Um, and we're gonna have Kristen Robbins here on the back half, so stick around for that as well. She's gonna talk in depth about um our first story here, which is that last week Chairman James Comer's House Oversight Committee released a report and they titled it The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walls and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota's Fraud Explosion.
SPEAKER_01That title is so good.
SPEAKER_03I aspire to write like that. Right. And it's 205 pages. Okay, this thing is beefy. We printed it out here at the office and it is beefy. But if you look at it online, it's really interesting. You can actually watch the clips embedded in the PDF as you're scrolling through. It's a great document. Um, and it basically details how the Walls administration was aware of the fraud since 2019 and failed to restrict payments or root out fraudsters. Walls seemed to prioritize getting money out the door and measured success by volume rather than by how much good the money did.
SPEAKER_01Which I mean, is if that is not indicative of his administration as a whole. I mean, every single area of governance, I mean, education, public safety, apparently fraud, and state services, it's all measured by how much money they were kicking out the door, not actual results.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. It's the inputs, not the outputs. It's what we always say here on the show how much money is going out the door, not like what is the money doing and is it helping people? Yeah. So um, this invited fraudsters, obviously, when that's what you're focusing on. And when red flags were raised and whistles were blown, the whistleblowers and the flag raisers were threatened to keep the mess quiet. Vice President J.D. Vance subsequently referred the allegations in the report to the DOJ's new fraud division for criminal investigation. This clearly signals accountability for the fraudsters who financially benefited, as well as the potential for those enabling the fraud to face consequences. Uh, us here at American Experiment, we're really excited to see our work cited eight times throughout the report. So if you've kept up with this podcast for a while now, you know a lot of what this report laid out. Um, I don't know, was there anything in it that really surprised you, Grace, or you were interested to see that you feel like you didn't know?
SPEAKER_01I think it was more um an overall feeling of validation. It's everything that we kind of suspected here at the local level in Minnesota. Everyone had the sense and kind of piecing it together that they knew what was going on and they chose to look the other way, and in part chose to look the other way because of the race and ethnicity of the majority of individuals who were, you know, doing this fraud. Um and so to see it laid out so clearly in this, you know, federal report is I think very gratifying, especially for all of us here at American Experiment who have been reporting on it, including, of course, Bill Glau. And by the way, if you have not signed up yet for one of our Minnesota fraud summer tour events, the kickoff is this coming Monday in Maple Grove. And Bill Glawn is gonna be, I believe, at every single tour stop, explaining how this fraud happened, connecting the dots, following the money, explaining who the key players are. That is gonna be kind of the end-all summary of how this happened in Minnesota. And if you haven't signed up yet, go to americanexperiment.org slash events. I think we'll both be at that kickoff event. It's gonna be really cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's already 150 people signed up for that Maple Grove event. So it's gonna be uh it's gonna be a party. So make sure you join us. What about you? Did you find anything especially shocking in that report? Okay, well, the thing I found most shocking is actually something that Bill Glon pointed out on our website just, I think yesterday, that I didn't see reported anywhere else. And it's honestly jaw-dropping. I think it it might be one of the craziest things that come out of the report, but it's like two little sentences in there on page 85. And it reads this in 2017, DHS flagged concerns that the bank account of the owner of a childcare center connected with the MMCA was frozen by the Office of Foreign Asset Control due to the owner's association with the Taliban. Despite these concerns, DHS mailed this individual a check for $24,000. That's right, the Taliban, like the terrorist group, the Taliban. And MMCA refers to the Minnesota Minority Childcare Association. The report goes on to quote an internal email within the State Department of Human Services back in, again, 2017. Gosh. That said this within the last few days, DHS sent an electronic payment to redacted. We have been advised that the payment was kicked back by the subject's bank due to the center's account being frozen by the Office of Foreign Asset Control. Redacted, it appears the owner of the childcare center is associated with a Taliban official, which is why the account was ordered frozen. I love to, like part of this being that the bank was the one to freeze the account, and then the government is like, oh, I guess they're associated with the Taliban, and the bank found it out before we did.
SPEAKER_01That is such garbage. It is shameful how much of Minnesota's fraud scandal was known so early on. This is what, 2017, 2019. So much of this could have been prevented. Like the flood of money that came into states like Minnesota during COVID, all of that extra Medicaid funding that we got, so much of it went to fraud. Like that is why when you hear people talk about like the billions and billions of dollars that went to fraud in Minnesota, like a huge part of that is the COVID era, like money push. And we knew that fraud was happening at that level years before COVID ever happened. So much of this money could have been stopped from going out the door if administration officials took their job seriously.
SPEAKER_03That's such a good point because people do blame COVID a lot, but it was already happening before then. The influx of money just allowed an increase of fraud to happen. But the fraud was already happening. This is 2017. And they sent $24,000 to that individual after knowing that the bank had frozen his account because he was associated with the Taliban. As if that weren't enough, the internal DHS email notes that uh a redacted individual, who is likely the same one that's mentioned above, is connected to yet another center and has visited Edmonton 11 times, Malaysia two times, Somalia 42 times, and Kenya 33 times. As we like to say here at American Experiment, your tax dollars at work.
SPEAKER_01This is also, it should be. I mean, I I guess the theme of today's episode is like vindication or validation. But like for all the journalists and media people out there and progressives who were like pointing and laughing and shaming basically people like Chris Ruffo for so daring to suggest and point out that some of Minnesota's fraud dollars were going to terror groups. I I I mean, I hope I hope that he sees this. Again, this has not been widely reported at all since this report came out. I don't know. I mean, it's 200 pages, right? So maybe people just haven't found it yet. But hopefully Chris Rufo and some of the other people who were raising that flag on this issue see, you know, see this.
SPEAKER_03Right. And even the local news stations who back in 2018 were talking about suitcases of cash going out of MSP and were really harped on by Democrats and denounced as racist for doing that. They were right, you know. So I hope they have some vindication too.
SPEAKER_01Uh, in some more positive fraud news.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_01An international fraud fugitive who was on the FBI's new most wanted fraudster list was secured and made his first court appearance last week. Saeed Abdullahi Ereg had fled to Kenya to avoid arrest on fraud charges, but he returned to America once the FBI put up a $150,000 reward for his return. Apparently, this is true. Apparently, this is what I've heard. He did not want one of his friends in Kenya getting wind of this reward and turning him in and getting that cash. So he just came back of his own volition. So funny. Okay. Do you think he got the reward himself? Oh gosh, I hope not. There's no way, right? Is that how rewards work? I don't know. Cannot be. Even funnier, in my opinion, he had actually fled to Kenya with his wife, another fraudster, by the way. A family business. It is a family business, apparently. She turned herself back in or turned herself in back in October and then pled guilty a few months later. In April, she made a request to travel back to Africa. She's like in the justice system at this point. She's, you know, she's pled guilty. She's asking to go back to Africa. And praise God, that request was not granted. I think that there is maybe some sanity left in some pockets of our country. What in the world? Yeah, I'd like to get out of jail, please. Like, uh, okay. Well, that's that's it's like a parallel but better story of the of the fugitive who who was in court and and they they gave him his passport back. Oh, yeah. Remember? They like he was like known as a flight risk and they gave him his passport, and didn't he flee? I mean, isn't that how they lost him? Right. But this time, this time it went a little bit better. Now, this power couple, you might say, operated the Evergreen Grocery in South Minneapolis and allegedly stole more than four million dollars from the free food program in 2020 and 2021. All this reporting, of course, comes to us from Bill Glaun at americanexperiment.org. I love the energy of this story. That's not something I say typically, but the vision of like a hundred and fifty thousand dollar bounty being put up by the FBI and you've got wanted posters, and that being the reason that we got this fugitive to come home, I love the like wild west, like sheriff's energy that is attached to this case. I want to see so much more of this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the image is like, you know, the kind of frayed paper with the like edges and it says wanted across it. I love it. I mean, let's let's have some fun, let's get the bad guys, let's do it. I mean, I'm glad people are taking it seriously, and uh it's working, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes the oldest solutions are truly the best. That's so true. And then the last little piece of fraud news that we wanted to share uh the DOJ is working on stripping citizenship from 17, quote, naturalized sex offenders, fraudsters, drug dealers, and more. And of course, there's a Minnesotan on that list. This guy applied for citizenship in Minnesota back in 1997, was denied, and then reapplied under a different fake identity, and was accepted. And then admitted it later, and only now is being stripped of his citizenship. So that's cool. Wait, he's been here since before you were born? Uh yeah. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_03I'm mainly catching this now. Like, that's great. I would love to see that number 17 just like pump those numbers. What's that like gif? Pump those numbers. Uh, let's do that. I think it's from like, do you know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_02Okay, we'll find it.
SPEAKER_03I think we'll put it in. It's from uh the the the one where they're you know all on Wall Street doing cocaine. Oh what movie is that? Well to Wall Street. Okay. Pump those numbers up. Come on, DOJ. Let's go. 17, let's try a couple hundred, maybe a couple thousand.
SPEAKER_01In uh unhappier news, I would say, Minnesota's national ranking on education fell even further this year. Uh, in just five years, our ranking has fallen from number seven in the country, one of the best, to 21. And all of this points to the fact that Minnesota does not have the education system that it did, you know, 15, 20 years ago. People were always proud of the great schools in Minnesota, right? We were kind of a magnet state in some ways. Yeah. You know, we were the state with uh with no fraud, no corruption. We had the state government that works. We had great schools, beautiful lakes. And uh, so many of the items on that list are not true anymore, sadly. And I, you know, everyone in your life needs to know that. The idea that our school system is failing our students, that half of our kids cannot read or do math at grade level. People need to shout this from the rooftop, seriously. Now, this is Josiah Padley reporting at AmericanExperiment.org. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's kids' count report takes into account scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That's the NAPE test scores, right? Standardized testing. How many young children are not in school, and how many students graduate high school on time. Which the fact that graduation is one of the metrics in this report, and we still fell to 21 is so funny. We are literally graduating anyone with a pulse.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I think it's like 90%. And like most of the kids, yeah, can't read or write at grade level, but they're graduating them all. So yeah, imagine if they hadn't taken that into consideration.
SPEAKER_01I can't even imagine what our what our score would be. That's totally holding us up. And the question on my mind is kind of, you know, what's the answer here? Uh, it's not more money because we've been trying that for decades. Um, pretty sure the schools are, you know, fully funded by now. That's what they always try to say, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, they'll never be fully funded under their under their terms because there's no actual number that would make our schools fully funded. Uh, but yeah, we keep raising uh the amount of money we're pouring into education, and our results are getting worse and worse. So there's got to be something else we can try.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's not even to mention the fact that other states that spend less on their students in their education systems are doing better, like Mississippi. I think it also doesn't help that there's this huge trend to prioritize like literally anything and everything over just teaching kids basic skills like reading and doing math. Like half of our kids can't read or do math at grade level, but you've got a school in St. Paul that's actually choosing to shift their focus away from academics to culture. The Benjamin E. Mays Elementary School is trading in its international baccalaureate program for an Afrocentric one.
SPEAKER_03What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, school officials say the program's emphasis on, quote, culturally relevant instruction and community engagement will be a path to increased academic performance. Now, I don't know about that. Yeah, Catherine looked into this. Catherine McFawd, American Experiment. She said that research out on Afrocentric curricula is, quote, limited, uh, and that the studies that do exist don't offer reliable evidence that such programs consistently improve student achievement. So I'm not holding my breath, personally.
SPEAKER_03Right. You'd think that you'd want to focus more on um the core skills and not so much like the cultural kind of stuff. It's funny, there's all kinds of stuff like this, like even if your school's not changing to an Afrocentric curricula. I bet they're doing like social emotional learning and things like that. That's like, okay, how secondary. I mean, I I think it's even pretty harmful, but at the very least, it should be secondary to our kids being able to read.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, exactly. And I feel like it's all part of that broader trend of, you know, saying that things like rote memorization don't work, that they're even oppressive or racist. I've heard that argument for sure, that the like tried and trued method methods of instructing kids in reading and math don't work. They're not good enough. And so we've moved away to like you said, social emotional learning, these like softer skills, these like more of like flexible school environments, and our school score, like our test scores are plummeting. Like it's not working, and this shift just continues to happen. It's so frustrating. They're doing everything short of you know, trying cold hard accountability. You know, it's a culture problem or it's a funding problem, or it's a COVID problem. COVID was the scapegoat for years, you know. So kids went home, they weren't learning in the classroom. That's why they can't read or do math at grade level. But every other state has recovered from that, and Minnesota just hasn't. Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that, you know, these schools don't have any competition. There's no real accountability, right? Sure. So, you know, they can they can keep graduating kids without any kind of proficiency requirement. Um, they can keep asking for more money and and they get it. That's kind of the problem, you know. There's there's not enough other alternatives for parents who maybe can't afford to send their kids to private school or don't have the flexibility to homeschool. Right. They know people are stuck in their schools. Yeah, exactly. They're gonna keep getting those tax dollars either way. Yeah. And, you know, school choice is, I think, the strongest answer to this kind of like landscape problem that we have with Minnesota's school system. It's one of apparently the few policies that MAGA supporters and liberals agree on. Everyone wants school choice. But, you know, even as more states pass it, Minnesota hasn't gotten there yet. So I think until that happens, unfortunately, the monopoly that the public schools have on the system is gonna keep accountability from breaking through and raising our test scores.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. And I think uh the teachers' unions are largely to blame here in Minnesota. Yeah. All right, let's go to our last story, which is a story about a specific um criminal case that happened. But I think it's super interesting because it reflects a couple different problems in the system that it's good for us all to be aware of. I've also actually seen a lot of um like memes or like in internet content essentially about this case that's not totally accurate. And so I think it's an interesting one to talk about because it the narrative is not totally in line with what actually happened. So, anyway, let's cover it. David Zimmer reported about it on our website. This very sad case unfolding in Mankato, Minnesota. It revolves around the May 23rd, 2026 murder of 17-year-old Tyson Goodsell in Mankato. There are four defendants involved in the killing, all ranging in age from 18 to 23. On Saturday, May 23rd, Ryan Woolner set out to rob a plug, which thank you, David Zimmer has informed me is slang for robbing a drug dealer. Ah. A plug. He retrieved an AR-15 rifle that he stored at a friend's house due to his previous crimes and enlisted the help of two other three other guys, two of them named Mohammed and one of them named Moheddin.
SPEAKER_01Okay, hang on. Can I pause for a second? So this this this kid, this guy, had previous crimes attached to his record. So he was keeping his gun at someone else's house. So, by the way, you know, stricter gun laws would not have altered this situation at all, right? Because bad guys are gonna try to get their hands on guns either way. Right. Okay, go on.
SPEAKER_03Just wait. Okay, Wolner then set up a deal through a third party to meet Goodsell, who's the victim, under the pretense of buying thousands of dollars worth of THC cartridges and marijuana from Goodsell. Mohaden agreed to be the gunman in the robbery. But when Goodsell saw Mohedon, he tried to drive away. So Mohedon shot six rounds into Goodsell's car, fatally striking him in the head. This all happened, by the way, in a North Mankato neighborhood, not in some vacant lot in the south side of Chicago. I mean, it really reads like something uh out of the inner city that it doesn't happen in Mankato, Minnesota. The four suspects fled in two vehicles and took steps to hide the murder weapons and to discard cell phones and one of the cars used in the murder. Thankfully, the police. Methodically put the evidence together and have secured multiple charges against each of the defendants for their roles in the murder. But what's interesting is that despite their ages, from Abraham 18 to 23, three of the defendants have criminal histories that include multiple violent felonies. In fact, Wolner, Amen Mohammed Mohammed, and Moheddin were each on conditional release for serious violent felonies, including attempted murder and armed robbery. And we're all wearing court-bandated GPS tracking devices at the time of the murder.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_03Okay, this case alone should call into question the lack of deterrence that such conditional release practices have on proven violent offenders. I mean, the guy who shot Goodsell had literally shot someone else a year and a half before this. Oh my gosh. So obviously, this whole conditional release thing is not really working. And it's interesting, like I said, this has happened at Gaban Cato, but I have heard the most about this from Mary Moriarty, and we've talked about it on the podcast, I think, how she's really into this idea of not keeping, especially younger criminals in jail while they're waiting for their trial and their sentencing. She really wants them to be out on the streets, maybe even wearing these tragging monitors that don't seem to stop them from doing anything. It's just an absurd, absurd thing. And more and more we're doing it here in Minnesota.
SPEAKER_01It's just tragic. I mean, this idea of soft on crime policies and restorative justice and giving, you know, young offenders a second chance. A 17-year-old, to be fair, not exactly a Boy Scout, he was selling what, like thousands of pounds of drugs. Okay. But even so, a 17-year-old lost his life because our court system, our justice system, did not treat these young offenders appropriately. And they apparently had the sense that it was okay to keep committing crimes and even kill someone, and they thought that they could get away with it.
SPEAKER_03Because they hadn't really suffered that many consequences, clearly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And one of the things that people like Mary Moriarty will say is that the data shows that those who are conditionally released from jail by our courts are generally law-abiding. But the truth is we don't have good data on whether or not that's true. And we have plenty of anecdotal examples like this one of violent offenders who have been released only to commit more violence when that shouldn't have even been possible in the first place. And Minnesota remains among the states with the lowest imprisonment rate and the highest community supervision rate in the country. This is just another tragic example of why it's not working. And one other side point on the whole marijuana THC of it all. In 2023, when the DFL had their trifecta and legalized what we now call adult recreational cannabis, a major argument used in that debate was that the legalization of pot would eliminate the marijuana black market. David Zimmer and plenty of others cautioned that this wasn't the case in other states that had legalized marijuana. In fact, the black market in many of these states was larger than ever, given the state-sanctioned approval of possessing marijuana. And where there's a black market for drugs, there is of course going to be violence. Good cell died selling THC cartridges to a group of thugs who have spent considerable amount of their young adulthood robbing marijuana dealers. So yeah, that didn't really work out either, like the DFL said it would.
SPEAKER_01It's really sad because I think it's an example of government, you know, and certainly the left following like a nice sounding theory on an issue rather than looking at the hard evidence that accompanies it. Like it sounds nice, it sounds even plausible that if you treat younger offenders more leniently, they're not going to go into the prison system, they're not gonna get, you know, further pushed down into, you know, under the heel of society. And they'll get reformed and they'll get their, you know, get their lives back on the right track. But the reality is the stories and the data that we have, that's typically not the case. And the same goes for unfortunately, you know, legalizing adult use, recreational marijuana. So, you know, it makes sense that if it's legal, the black market's gonna fade away because you don't have to, you know, get it illegally anymore. Um, but you look at the states that have legalized it, that's just not the case. And so it's frustrating to see that kind of pattern play out again and again in so many different areas of law enforcement.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And once again, the criminal is prioritized over the law-abiding citizen. Uh recidivism is certainly an issue. And we want to find ways that we can reduce that, but not at the expense of the law-abiding citizen who's just trying to live their lives. We want to reduce crime because think of all the other people who were impacted by this murder as well in this, again, Mankato neighborhood. It's not, I mean, they shouldn't have to put up with this. It should something should have been done about it, and it wasn't. And I wish that our leaders were prioritizing the people who are innocent instead of the people who are guilty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a good reminder that our state's criminal justice policies don't stay within, you know, Minneapolis or St. Paul, like this is happening in Mankato, it's happening in Greater Minnesota. Yep. And certainly statewide legalization of things like marijuana is going to impact everyone. Yeah, exactly. On that note, a very happy note, uh, we are now gonna sit down with Representative Kristen Robbins of the Maple Grove area, who is of course the chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Committee. Stick with us. American Experiment is supported by thousands of individuals like you. To join the movement, go to www.americanexperiment.org and click the yellow donate button. From all of us here, thank you. We are so happy to be joined now in studio by Representative Kristen Robbins, who is of course the chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Committee and has represented the Maple Grove area since about 2019. Welcome back to the show, Kristen. Thanks for having me. Of course, the huge news that's come out in the last week or so is this bombshell congressional report on Minnesota's fraud, which came out of, of course, uh the feds. And it's so interesting because it's been confirming a lot of the things that you on the fraud committee have been have been saying for months now, and that we at American Experiment, especially Bill Guan, have been saying, and yet it's so it's so validating for a lot of reasons. Uh what was your initial reaction when the report came out?
SPEAKER_00I was so glad to see it. I know they'd been working on it for months, and and I think it mirrors a lot of the uh findings of our majority report here at the House Fraud Committee, but it also was based largely on the transcribed interviews. And seeing those interviews was really helpful to me because some of the people they interviewed under subpoena would not come and testify for us at the legislature. So I was really glad to see that. But yes, their findings mirrored ours, and um it was an excellent report.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you are obviously kind of the expert in this topic, so I was wondering like, was there anything in that that really surprised you? Like you saw it and you were like, wow, I did not know that beforehand.
SPEAKER_00Um I knew most of it. I would say some of the detail in those transcribed interviews was what was surprising because uh they were contradicting themselves a lot, saying they absolutely didn't know. Then some other people would say, well, of course they knew. I was in the meeting and I talked to them. So I think it was those inconsistencies in their testimony that could lead to some other charges down the road. Um clearly uh how they portrayed themselves in in public wasn't true about what they actually knew.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01You were actually on Capitol Hill back in January before this committee, you know, but of course, before this report came out, um kind of sharing what the committee had found here, even with people refusing to testify. You guys really accomplished some pretty incredible things uh at the Minnesota fraud uh committee, of course. Um and by the way, if you missed that episode, that was episode 110. If you want to go back and watch, I think we had you on immediately after you got back into town and got kind of a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like, you know, sitting on Capitol Hill testifying. I think Bill Glon went as well. So it was kind of a little, you know, fraud crew from Minnesota sharing the story. Um but uh I mean, does anything else come to mind from that report that you feel like has not been reported on enough? Because I I think so far, sort of the mainstream legacy media has done a pretty good job of saying how devastating this report is for the Walls administration. I mean, their title of the report itself could not be any more damning. The cost of doing nothing, how Tim Walls and Keith Ellison fueled Minnesota's fraud explosion. I mean, that is shocking. And I so I think so far, groups have done a fair job of saying this is a huge deal. But are there any details that you feel have been sort of overlooked or undersold?
SPEAKER_00Right. I think one of the most important details that was highlighted by the report is absolutely that Tim Walls, Keith Ellison, and Ilhan Omar knew, and they actually did participate or their administration participated in covering up and retaliating against whistleblowers. But the other thing is that the report clearly states that DHS had the tools to stop payment and they didn't use them. And as a taxpayer and as someone who's talked to thousands of taxpayers around the state, Minnesotans are so frustrated and to have been told that lie over and over. Well, we couldn't stop payment, we didn't have the authority, it's absolutely not true. And we found that in our hearings where um people testified, no, they in fact could have taken that action, and now the feds have seen that as well. So I think that's a part of the story that hasn't been hit hard enough yet.
SPEAKER_03Okay, yeah, so I want to get into that because I found it interesting that in the report, in my opinion, it seems like they really narrowed in on the Walls administration as being the main um perpetrator here, the main problem. And they kind of blamed the Walls administration more so than the agencies, I think. You can tell me if you think you agree with that assessment. But it seemed like they were saying that the agencies were really pressured by the Walls administration to not say anything or do anything about the fraud. But then at the same time, like you're saying, they mentioned, well, the agencies could have done something. It's just that they were facing immense, basically, political pressure, the Walls administration worrying about optics and telling them, no, no, we're not gonna do anything about it. So, what was your reading of that? Like, how much of the blame do you think lies on the Walls administration versus uh the agencies?
SPEAKER_00So I think it's both. So the Walls administration appoints the commissioners, the deputy commissioners, and all of the political appointees. So at that level, the agencies and the WALS administration are both culpable, in my opinion. It's the lower level employees who are the career civil servants who were trying to blow the whistle, who were the ones who were retaliated against or who were told, don't say this because we're afraid of the bad press or we're afraid of being called racist, or we're afraid of lawsuits. So that was a real threat. The the fraudsters in Feeding Our Future did sue the Department of Education on the basis of racism for slowing down their applications. So this was an actual tactic by the fraudsters to keep the fraud going. And instead of um pushing back and standing up and saying we're not racist and we we have the authority to stop payment, they instead caved and um stopped payment uh or didn't stop the payments.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that is actually pointed out in the report, which is something that a lot of people don't know and I didn't know for a while, is that Walls was lying about this. He was saying that we were forced to put to continue those payments to feeding our future. And that that was just a lie, I guess, completely untrue. They were not forced to do that, they just continued to pay them anyway.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. No, and and interestingly, the judge in that case issued a very rare statement because the Governor Walls went out and said we were forced to stop the payments. And the judge issued a very rare public statement saying, No, Walls is lying. I did not say they had to stop payments. And so that illustrates the lengths to which they were going to do the cover-up. They wanted to protect their political base, to keep the payments going, to not be accused of racism or somehow um uh, you know, Islamophobic. So they really, this was an orchestrated effort to keep the payments going, to keep the money going, and Walls was clearly part of it.
SPEAKER_01It's fascinating too because even to this day, members of the administration and former members of the administration insist that the race, the ethnicity of the majority of the fraudsters played no part in the administration's decision to cover up the fraud and to not go after it. Uh, you know, one of the interviews that you or testimonies that you referenced that appeared in the report was Jody Harpstead, who was the commissioner of DHS while this was going on, 19 to 25. And they asked her, you know, did just point blank, did the race to the ethnicities of the fraudsters stop the administration from wanting to prosecute to go after this fraud? And she sits there for a full minute and is just it's like her brain short-circuited, and she didn't know how to answer that question. And then 60 seconds goes by and she finally says, no, I don't think so. And yet that completely contradicts, like you're saying, people are tripping over themselves, contradicting each other. We know for a fact, as you said, that the fraudsters were using race as a tool to stop the administration from going after them. That was a clear threat made in that secret Keith Ellison recording.
SPEAKER_00Well, in the recording, but also that was the basis for the lawsuit they actually filed. So, yes, the racism card was used a lot by the fraudsters, and that put pressure on the administration to not do their jobs. Fraud is fraud no matter who's committing it. And it shouldn't matter. Justice should be blind. So if someone's committing fraud, they should be stopped. But we had multiple whistleblowers who told us that they um were asked to uh not continue to press an issue or continue to highlight fraud because it was in a particular community, the Somali community. But I but I always want to be quick to say the Somali community is where the majority of the fraud occurred that we know of so far. But some of our best whistleblowers also came from the Somali community. And both things are true. Yeah. And and so I I just think um if the Walls administration would have stood up and and um sided with the whistleblowers who were trying to clean it up and said it doesn't matter where it's coming from, we're gonna stop the fraud and we're gonna protect taxpayers, protect vulnerable citizens, this wouldn't have exploded. We could have stopped this in the childcare era before COVID, but because we didn't, because they closed down the criminal investigation unit, they shut down the hearings on the Office of Legislative Auditory Report in 2019. That's what created the conditions that led to feeding our future that then morphed into all these other areas of fraud.
SPEAKER_01And it's so frustrating because to your point, we've heard from so many people in the Somali community saying, you know, we're law-abiding citizens here. And the fraudsters, the small group of fraudsters that committed this fraud is making all of us look bad. We're getting a bad rap here in Minnesota, and it is so unfair. And if if the Walls administration would have taken action early on, all of that could have been avoided.
SPEAKER_03Totally. And it hasn't helped now that the conversation has gone on for so long. I think it's only made the issue of race bigger and worse when it comes to the fraud issue. Um, I did want to talk about the whistleblowers too, because you mentioned them. I feel like they were very vindicated in this report, definitely. And that's partially thanks to your testimony, of course, and and the testimony of the other legislators. What is happening with those whistleblowers now? I mean, do they get jobs back? Do they are there protections in place for future whistleblowers? I just feel like this is a story that hasn't ended. So what's going on now with them?
SPEAKER_00So some of the early whistleblowers, like uh the ones who've been public, Scott Stillman, Jay Swanson, they quit their jobs under pressure. And so the whistleblower protection doesn't extend if you quit, it's if you've been fired. So in that sense, they made their decision, but it's really unfortunate because their careers were really uh hurt, especially Scott Stillman. And he actually ended up moving out of state. And so how their failure to take him seriously and to believe the whistleblowers, it had huge consequences in their personal lives. And Faye Bernstein, who still is employed at the Department of Human Services, she continues seven years later to not have been restored to her job. So she kind of gets moved from um a temporary job to temporary job. Currently, her temporary job is redacting documents for the department. I mean, this woman has uh two a master's degree and a law degree, and she is working so beneath her capacity because she is ongoing to this day being retaliated against for speaking out. So it's just uh terrible. But but I'm so grateful for their bravery and I'm so grateful they've had some vindication because I mean it's been a seven-year journey where people said they were racist, where they were lying, and it really, you know, was a burden emotionally and on their families as well as to their careers. And so I'm so grateful that they are finally seeing a measure of justice in this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I hope Scott Scott Stillman is somewhere feeling so much better because when he came out originally, I just re-looked into this a little bit for a speech that Grace and I did, and I was looking through his original testimony, and I think it was 2018, and I was like, oh my gosh, he was right about everything. Yeah. He was right. And at the time there were these reports coming out of um the kind of establishment media places saying this is absurd. Of course there's not suitcases of cash going out of MSP, because I was I was part of this as well. And of course there aren't these links to these terror groups. Anyway, you fast forward to now, and basically all of this, yes, was uh now vindicated at at the highest level. And so I just I oh my gosh, I feel I'm so thankful for those whistleblowers, and I'm glad that even though it took this freaking long, that finally I hope they have some peace that they did the right thing.
SPEAKER_00Right. And it shows it matters that they spoke up, it matters all these years later. So doing the right thing, it always matters even if it takes a while to get justice.
SPEAKER_01Do you have any lingering fears about whistleblowers being treated poorly in the future? Do you feel like that culture of retaliating against whistleblowers is going to linger even after you know the Walls administration is gone?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Depends who's governor. Do you think currently whistleblowers are still afraid. So there's this group out on Twitter, the DHS whistleblower group. They are still whistleblowing anonymously because they're afraid for their jobs. Last week I had whistleblower calls. We what we just went through this revalidation of all the Medicaid providers in DHS, and I had people who were part of those revalidation teams who still work in state government whistleblow to me about how bad that revalidation process was. So they are still afraid, they are still being retaliated against, they still fear for their jobs after two years of hearings, after all this time, all this vindication, all the news reports of actual fraud, all the criminal convictions, actual convictions, and the people who are doing the work in the agencies who want to clean it up are still afraid. So I just I'm grateful for you guys. Thank you for speaking out. They are the ones who are giving us the roadmap of how to figure this out and how how to stop the fraud. So thank you.
SPEAKER_03That revalidation process, I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit because I wasn't aware of it until I saw you talking about it on um on X, and I was so interested. So, what is going on with that revalidation process and how did that, what were the results?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so um, because we have these 13 high-risk Medicaid programs, Dr. Oz last summer came in and started this process where we had to have these 13 high-risk programs. They all had all of the providers, there was 5,558 providers roughly, they all had to go through revalidation. And it's not that complicated, honestly. So you fill out a form and then everyone had to get a site visit to verify it exists.
SPEAKER_03Novel.
SPEAKER_00You know, good idea to check the address is a real place. Um that their ownership is who they say they are, and that their employees in certain areas are qualified, and that they're listed on their W4s. So it's pretty basic. And so the the forms are filled out, they're turned in, and then people on these revalidation teams go do a site visit. And basically, they are only allowed to basically re-ask the questions on the form. And it's all still, after all this time, self-attestation. So if the person says, Yep, this is my address, this is my ownership, and these are my employees, they don't actually look at the forms, they don't look at their billing records, they don't look to make sure they actually have client billing records. So they're not looking at anything. It's still based on attestation and just verifying that the location exists. And based on that, I mean, I had whistleblowers as late as last week telling me that some of the revalidations, you you could tell um, you know, it was like a brand new desk, a chair, and a computer monitor that wasn't even hooked up. Oh my gosh. Um, in some cases, it was going to an address where mail was stacked outside the door, nobody answered the phone. So, so those places, some of them didn't get revalidated. Oh, of the nearly 6,000, only 37% were revalidated. Now that doesn't mean uh all of them were fraud, fraudulent because we heard from legitimate providers, especially in great. Minnesota who uh had a mistake in their form or the had the ownership not go through. One of the one of the things was owners all had to get fingerprinted and background checked. And I had some providers calling me and saying, Well, we we thought it was just the principal owner, not all investors, so we got tripped up on that. So they have 60 days now to go through an appeals process and try to get revalidated if they're legitimate. And I'm sure all legitimate providers will.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean I understand mistakes, but like 37% you said made it through. I mean, that's pretty.
SPEAKER_00I was shocked. I really thought at least 50% would make it through on the first round because it's a simple form. Yeah. And so I'm I'm very concerned, and I'm very concerned based on the whistleblower testimony. How so so one whistleblower said they happened to uh see an open file drawer and it was totally empty, and that was where they got their binder of information. So she said she she called it uh a Lego setup. Like you could tell that this office was basically created. I I have a whistleblower, a different whistleblower who told me that they had names scotch taped to the marquee in the office entrance with the names of these places. Like it wasn't like a longstanding business that had any evidence of clients.
SPEAKER_03Right. It's like they bought the desk but they didn't have the files because it wasn't a long-standing business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I'm I'm looking forward to seeing how the revalidation uh appeals process goes and seeing what that final number is. But thank goodness for uh Dr. Oz and his team being in here and holding their feet to the fire and making us go through this process because we need to clean this up. And this is just the first step. Like we still have to look at billing records, attendance records, and for the ones that don't ultimately get revalidated, we need to go back and look at their billing records and see if that was fraudulent. Because so far nobody's actually looked at the finances to see if there's been fraud in any of these.
SPEAKER_01Are there providers that are not even choosing to attempt to get revalidated? Are they just slipping away into the night? They're not even gonna try to get more.
SPEAKER_02Didn't that happen with one of them, like the autism providers or something? They asked for more information and half of them were like, ah, we actually don't decline. Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was in provisional licensure. Yes. So there were there were, I think, 111, like 2% that the way that DHS phrased it was something like, um, you know, they're no longer actively providing services. So interesting. But I've asked DHS, I'm like, so what happened to those 111? Did you go look at their billing records? Did you see how long they were providing services? I'm trying to get more information.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so the question everyone's asking after this uh congressional report came out um is because immediately after JD Vance came out and said that he had referred the allegations in the report to the Department of Justice's new fraud division for criminal investigation. Everyone wants to know does that is that gonna go anywhere? So what do you think? Do Walls and Ellison deserve to face some sort of criminal charges for what's happened here? And do you think that um realistically they actually will?
SPEAKER_00I don't know, and I don't want to speculate. I do believe that Department of Justice, under the new Attorney General for fraud, his name is Colin McDonald, he's a fantastic, great guy. I've met him when I was in DC, and I know that they will follow the facts in the law. And so I do think the concern raised by the House Oversight Committee report is the contradictory testimony in these transcribed interviews. So I think that's the basis on which they'll go back and say, at one point you said this, then you said this. So that contradictory testimony I think is going to be if there is any further criminal charges, that's how they'll get to it.
SPEAKER_01Now, the other exciting element here, vindicating element here, has been all of the arrests and convictions and sentences that are finally coming out of Minnesota. Because I think one of the most frustrating pieces for people watching this whole fraud scandal unfold is how slowly truly the wheels of justice do turn. And it's hard to explain to people who have been completely ripped off by fraudsters over the last several, several years that, you know, convictions are coming, justice is coming, but it takes such a long time. And so I think it's great that every week now at this point we're seeing more arrests being made. Obviously, just last week there was kind of this insane story of someone, an international fugitive even, getting brought back to the states and getting charged properly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, that was a great story. So what happened there is again, DOJ is doing a fantastic job. And so they created for the first time a most wanted fraudster list. And the first person on that list, Mr. Saeed Um Y Eric, yes, Eric. He was the top of the list and they had a $150,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest. That list came out on June 4th. Big picture, you know, the bounty-looking uh picture and reward. Love it. And the next day from Kenya, he called the FBI and said he would turn himself in. So he had been on the lamb since 2024 when he was indicted for $4.2 million in feeding our future fraud. And he fled the country, but rather than face someone overseas turning him in and getting the reward, he decided to turn himself in. And so I think that shows the power of incentives and consequences and deterrence, right? So I hope that we get everybody else on the list. But that was a big win for the Department of Justice, and I'm grateful for all of our partners at the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, uh JD Vance's group, um, the new U.S. Attorney for Fraud, Mr. McDonald. They're all working together and doing a fantastic job. But yes, it takes time, but we want it to take time. We're conservatives. We should want the process to have integrity and to play out, even if it takes time, so that we know justice is the process is working. And so even though it's frustrating, and I I share the frustration, um, you know, at this point we're up to, I think, a hundred indictments maybe, and more than 70 convictions. So it is happening. And I just encourage people to let DOJ do their jobs and to um and to make sure that that we are doing it right.
SPEAKER_03I think my last question is what's next? What still needs to be done? I mean, we still have it's great to see what the DOJ is doing, but we still have six months left of a Walls administration, um, where, you know, I don't know, I think their actions are still a bit questionable when it comes to fraud. Um what's next? What else, in your opinion, needs to be done in Minnesota to make sure that this is over, this is never happening again. We have learned from this and we're moving on.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think we have to keep doing what's going on now with revalidating all these programs. We have um caps on the number of new providers. One of one of the failures of this, one of the reasons this happened is because all of these Medicaid waivered services programs had very low barriers to entry, no caps on providers, no caps on recipients, so they just exploded. And and so we've stopped that. We put caps on all these things and are trying to put more guardrails in place. But that will take time. And once we get through revalidation, then we need to make sure any new providers are meeting the standards and that those uh much smaller number of providers are actually do doing the services vulnerable citizens need. So so we have to do that, but there's still many vectors of fraud that we have to explore. Like we're just my committee, we just were starting on assisted living. We were just starting on adult daycare. I just learned about ghost students. Ghost students. I was like, what is a ghost student? So we we did pass a bill to crack down on ghost students, but that's a whole nother vector of fraud that's not even it as part of this Medicaid 9 billion, right? So we have to keep um doing the investigations. I I still talk to whistleblowers multiple times a week who are bringing new stories to us. So we're gonna keep doing the investigating, we're gonna keep shining a light on fraud, we're gonna keep forwarding it to our friends um at DOJ, and hopefully these investigations will continue. But fraudsters need to know there's consequences, and the Walls administration should be joining us and partnering on cracking down and not just turning a blind eye or shuffling the chairs on the Titanic like they did with the latest new commissioner over there. I mean, they have not shown any willingness to actually have teeth and accountability. And so we're gonna do our best in the fraud committee to keep our um their feet to the fire, and then when we get a new governor, we will have the new Office of Inspector General, which passed, which will be great to have independent authority in the executive branch. And so I think I I know it's frustrating to Minnesotans, but we are getting there and we were gonna we're gonna keep pounding.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much for all of the work you have done on the fraud issue here in Minnesota, and we certainly hope to see you at our kickoff fraud explained event in Maple Grove next week. Oh, yes, look forward to it. Thanks. Thank you so much to everyone who made it all the way to the end of this week's episode of the American Experiment Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Remember to like and subscribe on YouTube or Spotify or Apple, wherever you're listening. And also remember, go to our YouTube and let us know what you think is gonna happen to Walls and Ellison. Are they going to face criminal charges? I can't wait to find out personally.
SPEAKER_01Will Walls have to get brought back from Austria, handcuffed, and face justice?
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_01Where should Walls go next? And as always, stay safe, stay sane out there, and we will see you next week.
