Feeding his lies

It was inconceivable to me that Kamala Harris would select Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate because of his record in office. His record as governor ranges from the horrible to the despicable. I made this point, by the way, before Harris selected Walz, in the July 30 Free Beacon column “Take my governor — please.”

In that column I wrote that Walz would never live down the frauds committed under the watch of the state agencies under his jurisdiction. Now CNN has taken up these frauds in the (necessarily long) story “As fraud scandals erupt in Minnesota on Gov. Tim Walz’s watch, accountability is in short supply.”

By far the most notorious of these is the Feeding Our Future case. It represents the single biggest COVID fraud uncovered in the United States to date. When it comes to COVID fraud, we’re number one. All together, 70 defendants have been charged. As of today, twenty-six or so have pleaded guilty.

The first of the cases to go to trial featured a large cast of seven defendants—the biggest criminal trial ever in federal court here. Five of the seven defendants were convicted. Two were acquitted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried.

Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, defendants purported to dish out millions of meals to children and families. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) administered the payout of some $250 million to reimburse mythical meals served around the state. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering.

In guilty pleas taken on September 20, for example, one defendant “admitted that he falsely claimed to have provided more than 15 million meals, including 140,000 at a single site in Pelican Rapids in October 2021 alone. The town is home to about 2,500 people.”

CNN focuses on the lack of “accountability” in the state agencies responsible for administering the funds that the state has doled out as a result of fraud. No one at the Minnesota Department of Education has been fired as a result of the massive Feeding Our Future fraud scandal.

Worse than the lack of accountability is Walz’s characteristic use of the lie to cover up his responsibility. He has now been exposed on the national stage as a compulsive liar in a way that the Minnesota press has — somehow — overlooked.

The Feeding Our Future case presents a classic example of Walz lying to deflect attention from his responsibility for fraud under his oversight. CNN doesn’t get to this part of the story, at least not explicitly.

In his con man mode Walz sought to blame the Feeding Our Future Fraud on state district court judge John Guthmann, who handled a case regarding MDE’s processing of applications. Walz and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison blamed the judge for ordering the state to continue making payments. Judge Guthmann authorized an unprecedented press release correcting “media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.”

This is the final paragraph: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

Looking for my Free Beacon column online this morning, I came across my August 7 appearance on Fox Business’s Big Money Show with hosts Brian Brenberg and Jackie DeAngelis. The video is posted with the heading “Tim Walz comes across as a fast-talking con man.” Me — I come across as a slow-talking Minnesotan.

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