Fraud Committee UpdateFriends and neighbors, This week, I want to update you on the hearing we had in the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee with MN Attorney General Keith Ellison. We took a closer look at an explosive hour-long audio recording from December 2021 featuring Ellison meeting with individuals who would later be indicted and convicted in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Three shorter clips from this recording were played in committee, each revealing troubling statements from the Attorney General that directly conflict with his public statements and testimony before our committee. I’ve provided a breakdown of those tapes below, followed by an overview of my questioning and the concerning contradictions that remain unresolved. What’s on the TapesClip 1 AG Ellison tells a group of nonprofit operators, some of whom were later convicted of fraud, “We are in the middle of a battle with the agencies now.” This is especially troubling because, at the time of the meeting, his office was representing the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) in an active lawsuit filed by Feeding Our Future, the same group these individuals were affiliated with. His job was to defend the state, not to side with those suing it. Clip 2 Participants in the meeting complain about their food distribution sites being shut down. In response, AG Ellison gives them his official government email and tells them to send him names of individuals who “probably won’t survive unless they get their money soon.” He then promises to call state agency leadership into his office to “demand some explanations.” Immediately after this exchange, the group discusses Safari Restaurant, an entity later revealed to be a key player in the fraud, and its lawsuit against MDE. Ellison’s client in that case was the Department of Education, yet he made clear in the meeting that he intended to pressure his own client to benefit the meeting participants. Clip 3 One attendee tells Ellison he’s tired of departments accusing their organizations of fraud. He adds: “We’re jumping into the fight with some serious money and some serious organizing… We need you in this fight with us. I know you’re going to get hit hard, but we are going to commit to backing you.” Ellison responds enthusiastically: “Let me tell you this—of course I’m here to help… Let’s go fight these people.” These tapes reveal an Attorney General who is clearly aligning himself with a group actively under scrutiny, whose members were already involved in legal disputes with the state. His language is combative, not toward those committing fraud, but toward the very agencies tasked with preventing it. You can listen to the three clips and the full 50-minute audio recording here: Questioning the Attorney GeneralRep. Robbins began the discussion by talking about HF20, a bill that would have increased transparency in the AG’s office but has been voted down by Democrats three separate times this session. A representative of the Attorney General's Office responded, saying that none of the data is public, and they wouldn’t support increasing transparency. Reps. Hudson and Schultz then kicked off questions relating to the first audio clip. The recording makes it seem like the primary concern is keeping people in business. However, the people speaking in the recording were grant recipients who were supposed to be providing services to people in need. Hudson points out the contradiction that the AG is focused on ensuring these meeting participants, who would later be indicted for fraud, are getting their payments rather than supporting the Agency he legally represents, especially since those meeting participants were in an active lawsuit with MDE. Ellison responded, saying, “I meet with constituents all the time… overwhelmingly, most of them are good people who want to be listened to. Some of them are fraudsters.” Rep. Schultz continued the questioning, highlighting the statement, “We are in the middle of a battle with the agencies.” He asked the Attorney General what he meant by that. Ellison responded to both questions by not actually answering them, downplaying the meeting as a simple meeting with constituents that was three and a half years ago. Committee Democrats then proceeded to stall in hopes they could prevent the AG from taking more questions. After the delay, I played clips 2 and 3. As early as 2020, his office was involved when Feeding Our Future was sued for the first time, and his office was involved in defending MDE, which was pulling payments because it suspected fraud. I told the AG that it is very hard to believe that he was not at least somewhat aware that Feeding Our Future was under investigation at the time of this meeting.  In the recording, the participants admitted they were shut down in April as part of the department’s push to eliminate funding to fraudulent organizations. The AG offered them help even though he should have reasonably known that the people he was talking to were a part of the fraud. You can watch that clip by clicking the video above. Overall, there were a lot of nothingburger answers from the AG that will require additional scrutiny. The timeline needs to be clarified. We need to know more about what the AG knew and when. Further, if he truly didn’t know about the investigation when his office was already working on the lawsuit between fraudsters and MDE, then we need to know why. As the chief legal officer of our state, he should have been aware of the largest COVID-era fraud scheme in the country, happening under his watch. There are also some glaring concerns regarding campaign contributions to Ellison from the fraudsters that warrant further investigation. Aside from the Fraud Committee, we continue to hear finance and policy bills on the floor and hope to remain on schedule to finish session on time. We still haven’t come to an agreement on some of the bills I wrote about last week, but I’m feeling bullish. |