Minnesota
March 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Lead prosecutor Joe Thompson completed his cross-examination of Aimee Bock yesterday morning. His cross-examination was something of a master class in the art. Bock came across as a practiced liar — “practiced in the art of deception,” to quote the Rolling Stones song. It’s hard to tell, but in my judgment Thompson’s art exceeded Bock’s. I think the jury saw through her blatant lies and formulaic responses. Thompson’s cross made
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March 14, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Defense counsel Ken Udoibok concluded his direct examination of Aimee Bock at trial yesterday morning and lead prosecutor Joe Thompson commenced his cross-examination. Bock is the ringleader of the $250 million Covid fraud with which she and a total of 70 defendants were charged in September 2022. Bock’s is the second Feeding Our Future fraud case to come to trial. This one includes 21 charges against Salim Said, one of
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March 13, 2025 — Scott Johnson
When trial resumed yesterday after a four-day weekend break, Aimee Bock continued her testimony on direct examination under the questioning of defense attorney Ken Udoibok. Bock testified to the Feeding Our Future management structure, to her responsibilities as executive director of the organization, and to the claims process. She methodically presented the whole thing as a sort of well-oiled machine. Bock’s taking the stand should be the most dramatic moment
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March 12, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota is now facing a $6 billion budget deficit for the upcoming biennium, and this year’s legislative session is dominated by the debate over what to do about it. But some Democratic Senators’ attention is elsewhere: they have introduced a bill to appropriate $100 million for slavery reparations. The bill begins with the usual recitations with which we have all become familiar. In essence, it says that United States history
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March 11, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Bill Glahn is the former research consultant for the Minnesota House of Representatives and former Deputy Commissioner of Commerce in the Pawlenty administration, among other items on in an impressive résumé. He now serves as a fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, where he has put his expertise in state government to work tracking the scandals that have dogged the Walz administration and cost the state hundreds of
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March 10, 2025 — John Hinderaker
…America’s most unsuccessful politician. He took over as governor of a state that had always been low-crime, and now, for the first time ever, Minnesota’s serious crime rate is higher than the national average. He became governor of a state that had long been prosperous, and after six years, again for the first time ever, Minnesota’s per capita GDP is below the national average. Despite spending astonishing amounts of money,
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March 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Judge Brasel held a pretrial hearing in another serious multiparty criminal case from 9:00 until about 10:45 yesterday morning. The case allegedly involves members of Minneapolis’s Highs gang. It’s charged as a RICO case. Earlier this week Judge Brasel sentenced one of the co-defendants in the case — Deandre Poe, a.k.a. “Squizzy” or “Fat Squad” — to 168 months in prison. On his way out of court after the hearing
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March 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
After a day off on account of inclement weather, trial resumed yesterday with the (continued) direct examination of FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase. Ms. Roase is the second of three FBI forensic accountants to testify in the trial. She was followed at the end of the day yesterday by Sonya Jansma, who is the last witness the government will call before resting its case later today. Let me digress for
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March 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Ten Somali Minnesotans — always referred to in press reports as “Minneapolis men” or “Minnesota men” — sought to leave the United States and join ISIS in 2015. Charged with supporting a terrorist organization, six pleaded guilty and three contested their indictment at trial. One appears to have been killed pursuing his interest in the jihad. One of the “Minnesota men” involved in the planning worked at the MSP International
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March 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The prosecution is wrapping up its case against Feeding Our Future founder/executive director Aimee Bock and fraudster Salim Said this week. It has methodically proved up a colossal fraud perpetrated on all of us who fund the United States Department of Agriculture’s child nutrition programs by the Feeding Our Future nonprofit and the numerous “sites” it sponsored to participate in the program during the Covid era. Feeding Our Future founder
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March 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The Feeding Our Future fraud trial resumed yesterday with the continued direct examination of FBI Special Agent Travis Wilmer. Agent Wilmer was one of the lead investigators of the fraud. Prosecutor Dan Bobeir reviewed a mountain of evidence making out the fraud with Agent Wilmer in the course of his examination this past Thursday and yesterday. The highlight of his testimony came with the introduction of text messages sent between
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March 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
If you conduct a Google search on “Putify Nop,” Google will correct it to “purify mop” and provide a mind-bending selection of items that answer to the description. However, in his testimony at the Feeding Our Future fraud trial this week, IRS Special Agent Joshua Parks cited “Putify Nop” as one of the absurd “names” of fictitious children submitted to Feeding Our Future by “sites” allegedly providing free meals under
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February 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
For this series of reports on the current Feeding Our Future fraud trial in Minneapolis I am using a thumbnail photograph of Guhaad Hashi or Guhaad Hashi Said. Lifted from his old Facebook page, Hashi’s s image instructs Somalis to keep their lips sealed about Ilhan Omar. Indeed, that’s how I first heard about him in the course of my initial reporting on Omar’s marriage to her brother. I was
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February 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Republican state senator and physician Scott Jensen ran against Tim Walz in the 2022 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign. Having opposed the incredibly arbitrary and destructive one-man rule that Walz imposed during the Covid regime — Walz never wanted it to end — Jensen made an issue of it. Speaking to an enthusiastic audience at a quadrennial event of the Minnesota chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Jensen cited The Rise and
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February 27, 2025 — Scott Johnson
We are ending week three of the prosecution’s case against Aimee Bock and Salim Said in the second Feeding Our Future fraud trial. The leading quality of the evidence so far is the grossness of the fraud that funneled $250 million from the Covid-era school meal program into the pockets of a cast of mostly Somali thieves. Bock ran the Feeding Our Future nonprofit that “sponsored” restaurants and nonprofits to
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February 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
While attending the current trial in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud case yesterday, we received notice from the Office of the United States Attorney that another defendant had bitten the dust. The text of the press release sent out by the United States Attorney follows the conventions that rule the public discussion of such cases by reference to the defendant as “a Minneapolis woman.” Sad to say, the defendant
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February 25, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This story is from Rochester, Minnesota. Some would say it is a narrative of narrow-minded oppression. Why shouldn’t elementary school students be instructed–by the public schools–in the gay S/M culture? The local newspaper headlines: “Rochester Pride cancels reading by Emily Neilson, whose book was removed from Franklin Elementary.” After planning to travel halfway across the country to visit the community where her book was removed from the shelves of an
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