Yesterday, I argued that the VP debate between Walz and Vance would not be remembered for the issues discussed but for Walz's weirdness and especially his terrible defense of his misleading statements about his China trip. 

At the same time, my post went up, POLITICO released a story about Tim Walz's problems with the truth--proving my point that the media picked up on Walz's character flaw and are worrying it like a loose tooth. That was the subject of my first post of the day.

Now CNN is dropping its own bombshell on Walz, demonstrating that, once again, I am not as stupid as I seem. Walz has made himself a target, finally. 

CNN: As fraud scandals erupt in Minnesota on Gov. Tim Walz’s watch, accountability is in short supply. https://t.co/3EAbdtPW7G

— Andrew Wagner (@andrewwagner) October 4, 2024

The fraud scandals should have been the subject of endless stories, because they have been numerous under Walz. And HUGE. As in hundreds of millions or even over a billion dollars in fraud before and during the COVID crisis. 

Walz has been a terrible governor on many levels, but perhaps the most enduring legacy he will have is the way his administration has allowed huge amounts of tax money to go to political cronies, organized crime, and fraudulent corporations and nonprofits. You should go read the whole thing. 

MinneapolisCNN — 

One state audit found that bonus checks intended for frontline workers during the pandemic were handed out to undeserving recipients. Another criticized a Minnesota state agency for failing to ensure there were no conflicts of interest in taxpayer-funded mental health and addiction programs. A third detailed lax oversight of a program to feed needy kids which federal prosecutors say resulted in the nation’s largest Covid-era fraud scheme.

But when confronted with these and other troubling examples of waste, fraud and abuse, some state agencies working under the administration of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz repeatedly minimized or dismissed the allegations, the state’s nonpartisan auditor, Judy Randall, told CNN.

A CNN review of audits – and the responses they prompted – as well as interviews with statewide politicians and pundits, found that Walz has been a hands-off leader when it comes to seeking accountability for episodes of fraud and mismanagement on his watch. What’s more, some state agencies headed by his appointees have responded defensively in recent months to the audits – a dynamic that Randall, who has worked in the department for 26 years, has found surprising.

It is so bad, in fact, that in many cases, the state agencies were fine with the fraud until the FBI stepped in, as with the Feeding Our Future scandal that siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars, putting the money into the hands of a top Democrat and a rogues' gallery of mostly Somali fraudsters. Some of that money was sent to terrorist groups in the region. 

NEW: CNN releases scathing segment exposing how MN Gov. Tim Walz allowed the single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the nation.

In CNN's review of audits, they found that Walz was directly to blame for looking the other way when it came to fraud in his state.

One specific… pic.twitter.com/4p660h6ApL

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 4, 2024

Since the money came from the feds, the FBI stepped in to prosecute. The Minnesota Department of Education knew about the fraud but it continued, suggesting that top administration officials didn't mind it at all. I wonder why?

Some addressed high-profile scandals such as the pandemic fraud allegations and a troubled light-rail project – whose genesis predates Walz but is currently monitored by 17 Walz appointees – that has suffered from more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns. Randall’s office faulted that agency last year for a lack of transparency about rising costs and failure to ensure contractors’ ballooning price tags were justified. Others found holes in safeguards to waste or raised more targeted conflict-of-interest concerns, such as a state Department of Public Safety employee who received payments from the recipient of a grant that the employee oversees.

Randall told CNN that she knows of no personnel changes linked to any audit by her office since 2019, when Walz was sworn in.

Some of us have been screaming about this for years, but our local media has played softball with Walz, allowing him to get away with murder. It is so bad that one of the most famous pictures of Walz is him being hugged by children after signing a bill for free lunches. His management of the free lunch program during the pandemic cost taxpayers at least $250 million. 

Shameless. 

“The governor’s appointees across the board at almost all agencies have been hostile and uncooperative when citizens are seeking transparency and oversight through the legislative auditor,” said state Sen. Mark Koran, a Republican who serves as the vice chair of the state’s bipartisan legislative audit commission. “The hostility is led by Governor Walz.”

Yes. Yes it is. CNN is being far too kind. Many of us suspect that at least some of this fraud was allowed to go on because the perpetrators kicked back funds to the Democrat Farmer Labor Party, our state's Democrat Party. 

Dan Myers, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, said Democrats’ so-called trifecta in state government has likely hindered efforts to get clear answers into what went wrong in certain cases of fraud and waste.

“There has been less digging into that than there almost certainly would be if Republicans had had one more seat in the state Senate,” he said.

Blois Olson, a longtime political analyst in the Twin Cities who has moderated debates featuring Walz and his opponents, said he’s never seen evidence of any criminal conduct by a Walz staffer in any audit or indictment.

“They’re not corrupt,” Olson said, “they’re just casual in holding themselves responsible.”

I know Blois, and I believe that he believes what he says. But I also believe he is wrong. While the bureaucrats may not be corrupt, the top leadership in the agencies may very well be. And the Democrat Party here has, not coincidentally, benefited from campaign contributions from the very fraudsters who are now starting to go to jail. 

In the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, a nonprofit organization in Minnesota was embarking on what initially seemed a noble cause: Providing free meals to needy kids who might otherwise go hungry.

Because the nonprofit – Feeding Our Future – was funded through tax dollars, the program needed to be overseen by a state agency, the Minnesota Department of Education.

The state, among other things, needed to see proof that the federal money was being spent on its intended purpose – that is, that the number of meals the nonprofit claimed to be serving checked out.

Because social-distancing measures complicated the state’s ability to monitor the program in person, staff members sometimes did so virtually. On one occasion, they watched a live video via phone shot by the nonprofit’s executive director, Aimee Bock, as kids and/or their parents picked up boxes of meals at a site.

In 15 minutes, 30 kids received meals, but Bock’s phone shut off at that point – ostensibly because it died. Bock would report that within the next hour while her phone was off, the number of meals skyrocketed by a whopping 1,900%.

Randall said such a sharp increase struck her as “a little unlikely” and, at a minimum, worthy of further scrutiny.

“We didn’t see any evidence that the department looked into that,” she told CNN.

The anecdote, referenced in an audit, offers an example of lax oversight by the state that allegedly enabled vendors and sites to submit fraudulent claims for reimbursement.

I'm not the only one who sees a political angle to the Feeding Our Future scandal. 

Some insist that politics had something to do with the state’s seeming reticence to aggressively intervene. Aside from Bock, the vast majority of the Feeding Our Future defendants are members of the state’s sizable Somali community, an immigrant group that has become a stronghold of Democratic support in Minnesota. Some of the defendants had been regular contributors to prominent Democrats – including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

“Governor Walz and his administration, in addition to Keith Ellison, could not be seen prosecuting their friends in their community,” Koran said.

Is there proof? No. But many of the participants in the fraud spread political contributions around, and the head of the nonprofit, Aimee Bock, carries a lot of weight (or did) in Democrat circles. She was, not coincidentally, one of the only non-Somalis at the organization. 

Olson, the political analyst, said he believes the fraud under Walz is more prevalent in “dollars” and “scope” than under his predecessors.

“One instance is not new for a state, any state,” he said. “Multiple instances in the same administration on public-program fraud becomes a trend or a culture that the legislative auditor says is not right and we need to change.”

Feeding Our Future is only one of many instances of fraud in the state, and it is the feds and not the state government pursuing the alleged criminals. There is a culture of looking the other way, for whatever reason, and Walz has gotten a free pass because our media is closely tied to the Democrats. 

The new publisher for the Star Tribune was a Walz appointee, not coincidentally. He was the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development before taking over at the paper. 

Walz's performance before and at the debate has made him fair game. He has presented himself as allergic to the truth, and one of the biggest impacts of the debate is his being exposed to the world as such. 

It's an interesting parallel to the June debate between Biden and Trump. Debates, which usually don't matter, have turned out to have an outsized impact this year.