Washington Examiner senior columnist Guy Benson said Wednesday that Minnesota’s leadership “coddled” the perpetrators of the state’s fraud scandal.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison both testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday, where they admitted that Minnesota has been engulfed in a fraud scandal targeting federally funded social services programs. Among the scandals discussed in this hearing were the $250 million Feeding Our Future child nutrition fraud case and alleged abuse across Medicaid, autism services, child care assistance, and housing programs.
Benson said both Walz and Ellison need to “lose their jobs” over the state’s massive fraud.
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“The governor, the attorney general, they presided over this, they allowed this, to some extent, to happen, they coddled the people who are guilty, and I think we just have the tip of the iceberg on that,” Benson said on Fox Business’s The Bottom Line. “This was enabled by the Walz-Ellison administration.”
“And you look at the hockey stick-style increase in all of this fraud under their watch, that’s not some strange coincidence,” Benson said.
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Benson added that Democrats at the hearing “seemed desperately” want to turn it into a “hate-fest” on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said this has “nothing” to do with Minnesota’s fraud, and was simply “deflection.”
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Walz unveiled proposals for antifraud legislation last week that provide better detection and oversight, strengthen investigative and enforcement authority, and increase criminal penalties. These proposals come after Vice President JD Vance said the administration would pause $259.5 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota.
Dozens of states nationwide gave more than $380 million in Medicaid funds to medical providers who were later caught defrauding the federally funded program. The findings, which came to light as the Trump administration cracks down on healthcare fraud, are based on recently released Health and Human Services records documenting provider-level Medicaid payments from January 2018 to December 2024, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of Medicaid spending data.
