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A Republican state lawmaker who is hoping to dethrone Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in next year’s gubernatorial election charges that on the Democratic governor’s watch, Minnesotans have “had billions of our tax dollars stolen by people who are criminals.”
And state Rep. Kristin Robbins, in an interview with Fox News Digital, argued that Walz “has been an absolute failure” in combating fraud during his two terms as governor.
Walz in recent weeks has been facing plenty of political pressure from state and national Republicans, including President Donald Trump, as authorities investigate a series of multimillion-dollar alleged fraud schemes, including the governor’s handling of a massive relief program that federal prosecutors say devolved into the “largest pandemic fraud in the United States.”
Robbins, the chair of the Minnesota House’s Fraud Prevention and Oversight Committee, has made the issue a top priority of her GOP campaign for governor. She’s one of a handful of leading contenders in a crowded field of Republicans hoping to face off with Walz next November as the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee bids for a third term as governor.
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“I’ve been chair of the fraud committee since last January, and this has really been my main focus over the last year of the legislature,” she said. “And even though we’re out of session, I’ve continued to keep the fraud committee having hearings monthly, because this issue is so enormous, we still don’t have our arms around it. So we’re continuing to dig in.”
The first federal charges against alleged fraudsters in the case were filed three years ago. Fast-forward to today and there are now upwards of 75 defendants in the $250 million scheme.
The case revolves around a nonprofit named Feeding our Future, which partnered with the Minnesota Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute meals to children.
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Prosecutors charged that Feeding our Future and affiliated food distribution sites raked in millions of dollars by submitting fake meal counts and invoices to trick state and federal officials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of the people charged are of Somali descent. Minnesota has the largest Somali population of any state in the country.
The U.S. Treasury says its investigating whether tax dollars from Minnesota’s public assistance programs made their way to Al-Shabab, a Somali-based affiliate of al Qaeda, which the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
And the Republican-controlled U.S. House, through the Oversight Committee, has opened a probe into Walz’s handling of the relief program.
Robbins argued that under Walz’s watch, “we’ve had billions of our tax dollars stolen by people who are criminals, and Minnesotans don’t have the services they need, and Minnesotans work hard for their money and to see all this money being shipped overseas.”
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“Minnesotans now own a resort in Kenya. They own an apartment in Nairobi. They own a culinary school in Ohio,” she said. “It’s ridiculous, the things our money has been wasted on, and so I’m grateful to our federal partners who are prosecuting these cases, but we have to have a new governor who’s going to have a no fraud, no excuses culture.”
Walz, speaking to reporters on Thursday, pledged to “tackle the issue of fraud, of people defrauding the people of Minnesota and the state of Minnesota. We know now that those programs have been paused. We have an independent auditor from the outside. We’ve enacted new powers that we have to stop payments and to be able to make sure that that snapshot of what’s there is. The people who did it will go to prison.”
“My goal is to make sure that those going forward have much better tools, much more safeguards around programs,” the governor added.
But Robbins charged that Walz and his administration “are very late to this. They have stepped up recently, but the things that they’ve done, they already had the authority to stop payment when there were credible allegations of fraud. They already had authority to do prepayment reviews and close down some of these programs.”
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“They haven’t been doing it until we really have been holding their feet to the fire and exposing all the fraud,” she emphasized.
Trump has repeatedly blamed Minnesota’s Somali population for the fraud. On Tuesday, he called immigrants from Somalia “garbage” and claimed they “destroyed Minnesota.”
Last month, the president announced he was ending temporary deportation protections for Somali immigrants in Minnesota and claimed that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State.”
Walz on Thursday called Trump’s comments “vile racial racist lies” and “slander towards our fellow Minnesotans.”
Asked about the president’s comments, Robbins said, “the bulk of the fraud that we’ve uncovered so far is in the Somali community. And one of the reasons the fraud has perpetuated based on whistleblowers who reach out to me is that they were afraid to say that out loud, because they were afraid of having political retribution or being called racist.”
“So we do have to say that. Say it out loud. Most of the fraud is in the Somali community,” she added.
But Robbins also emphasized that “most of the best whistleblowers are also in the Somali community. Both things are true. So certainly, that’s where most of the fraud is. But also there’s a lot of people in the Somali community who want to clean it up.”
Robbins told Fox News Digital that her efforts taking aim at the fraud may boost her bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
“I certainly know where all the problems are and how this massive fraud scandal has been allowed to flourish under Tim Walz,” she said. “I think I can speak directly to it and take him on, directly on the debate and on the details. I think I’m most qualified.”
And Robbins added, “I’m also most qualified to solve it when I’m governor. So I’ve already rolled up my fraud plan of how we were going to standardize internal controls, how we’re going to have an Office of Inspector General, how we are going to hold employees in the state accountable. So I think I will be the one who can solve the problem for Minnesota.”
Robbins, who was first elected to the Minnesota House in 2018, represents a purple district in the Minneapolis suburbs. She has touted that in the crowded field of GOP gubernatorial contenders, she’s the “only conservative Republican who’s a proven winner in the suburbs.”
Robbins served as Minnesota state chair of former U.S. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s 2024 Republican presidential campaign.
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And on Thursday, Haley praised Robbins in a fundraising email to supporters.
“We have to stop Tim Walz and elect a leader who will fight to end this corruption!” Haley wrote. “Kristin Robbins has spent her career fighting fraud and she’ll do the same as governor.”
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