Americans were stunned last month to learn that members of Minnesota’s Somali community had scammed state taxpayers out of hundreds of millions — possibly even billions — of dollars.
The question on everyone’s mind was how did this go undetected for so long?
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 always entertaining senator from Louisiana read a particularly damning portion of an internal memo written by a fraud investigator from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Kennedy told his colleagues that those benefiting from the Feeding our Future program [Emphasis added.]:
[W]ent to the state and said, ‘If you stop giving us this money, we’re gonna call you racist and we’re gonna sue you. And you don’t want to be in the news.’Well, why didn’t the employees do something? They did. They told the people higher up — the people with the flags in their office, and you know what they did? Nothing. You know why? Here’s what the legislative auditor in Minnesota said: He said that the threat of litigation and the negative press affected how the state politicians used their regulatory power.Here’s what a fraud investigator in the Attorney General’s office said. She said, ‘There is a perception that’ — I’m quoting now — ‘that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is a core voting block for Democrats.’
That’s right. They didn’t want to offend members of the Somali community, whose votes they needed to continue winning elections.
We’ve heard this before — but never straight from the horse’s mouth.
Last month, Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo of The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, conducted an investigation into a massive Medicaid fraud scheme that allegedly funneled millions of dollars in Minnesota taxpayer funds to entities in Somalia. Reportedly, a portion of these funds went to the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab.
Thorpe and Rufo detailed their findings in a City Journal article appropriately titled The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.
Their report began with an overview of the vast scope of Minnesota’s welfare system, which the authors argued had, by its very design, made the state especially susceptible to fraud.
Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior. The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program.
The report quoted former Minnesota State Sen. David Gaither, who said that when members of the Somali community come under legal scrutiny, they typically respond by alleging racial bias. He noted, “Even if the facts don’t point to that, it allows for many folks in the middle, or on the center-Left, to stay silent.”
Gaither believes the mainstream media, alongside Minnesota’s Democratic establishment, have long turned a blind eye to fraud within the Somali community. This, in turn, allowed the problem to metastasize. “The media does not want to put a light on this,” Gaither said. “And if you’re a politician, it’s a significant disadvantage for you to alienate the Somali community. If you don’t win the Somali community, you can’t win Minneapolis. And if you don’t win Minneapolis, you can’t win the state. End of story.”
Taken together, Kennedy’s remarks and the Manhattan Institute’s reporting point to the same disturbing conclusion: Minnesota’s fraud problem was not merely a failure of oversight, but a failure of political will. Warnings were raised, and evidence was gathered, but officials chose inaction over accountability, fearing backlash from the Somali community more than betrayal of the public trust.
When accusations of racism become a shield against scrutiny and electoral calculations override enforcement of the law, fraud is not just possible; it is inevitable. Taxpayers were left exposed, and criminals were emboldened.
Until political leaders are willing to confront wrongdoing without regard to identity politics or electoral pressure, Minnesota’s scandal will remain less a cautionary tale than a blueprint for how corruption is allowed to flourish in plain sight.
Kennedy’s full remarks can be viewed here.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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