The debate over how much fraud has been committed against Minnesota social welfare programs has now gone national.
Joe Thompson, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney and lead prosector of the fraud cases appeared on the Fox New Laura Ingraham show last night. A clip,
Meanwhile, about an hour before Thompson appeared on Fox News last night, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran this headline,
Walz says there’s no evidence of $9B in fraud, exposing rift between state and feds
No evidence? None, if you don’t count the missing money. The Star Tribune writes,
Gov. Tim Walz lashed out at federal prosecutors Friday for proclaiming without evidence that the total amount of fraud in Minnesota social services programs could top $9 billion.
“It’s speculating,” Walz told reporters during a news conference at the State Capitol.
To be clear, the Walz news conference wasn’t about fraud, it was about Walz speculating on imagined harm Walz believes that Trump may do in the area of health care. The subject of fraud cam up in the Q&A at the end. Courtesy of KARE-11,
The Star Tribune reports,
John Connolly, deputy commissioner and state Medicaid director at the Department of Human Services (DHS), said his agency has seen evidence of “tens of millions of dollars in fraud to this point,” not $9 billion. DHS oversees all 14 of the “high-risk” programs under investigation by federal authorities.
“Tens of millions of dollars in fraud” refers to the dollar amount of fraud against DHS that Thompson is already prosecuting. Apparently, federal grand jury indictments are the only evidence that the state DHS accepts as indicative of any wrongdoing. Shouldn’t the information be flowing in the other direction? A damning statement from state officials,
[S]tate officials are seemingly frustrated that federal prosecutors won’t share details about suspected fraudsters.
Again, in an ideal world, the information should be flowing in the opposite direction. The Star Tribune quotes a former prosecutor critical of Thompson,
It seemed premature not to include an identification of the individuals responsible and the methodology by which they allegedly committed the crime.
What? Tip off the suspects so they can flee the country? In the years-long fraud scandal, we’ve already seen instances where state officials have tipped off fraudsters regarding ongoing investigations.
But even beyond that,
However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said it cannot legally share evidence obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena.
So we may be left with a he said, he said situation. One the one side we have a Stanford-educated career prosecutor with an impressive record of obtaining convictions, inside the courtroom and out. On the other side, we have Tim Walz.
Over the years, Walz has blamed the Minnesota fraud crisis, alternately and concurrently, on a county judge, President Trump, federal bureaucrats, and the state’s AAA-credit rating.
On a related note, I came across this headline from the Washington Examiner,
Internal Minnesota attorney general memo settles debate on Somali fraud
The Examiner reports,
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) may have provided the answer in remarks delivered earlier this month that have only recently come to the media’s attention.
The Senator is quoted,
Kennedy read a passage from an internal memo written by a fraud investigator within the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office — a document that gave the game away: ”There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is a core voting block for Democrats.”
Big, if true.
