Walz, the former Democratic running mate of former Vice President Kamala Harris, named Tim O’Malley as the new director of program integrity during a news conference Friday morning.
O’Malley is a former FBI agent who previously led the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, appointed by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty. He also served as chief judge of the state Administrative Hearings Court, appointed by Walz, and has worked in an integrity-related capacity with the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
“[O’Malley] will work together across state government to strengthen fraud protections and protect taxpayer dollars,” Walz said. “Tim made this clear yesterday as we were talking: he doesn’t work for me, he works for the people of Minnesota as we all do, and in fact he was so clear about that that he wanted to make sure he rewrote the press release that went out to make sure it doesn’t reflect a reality that we might imagine, but the one that actually exists.”
O’Malley said the governor personally assured him he would have “the freedom and autonomy to act and do whatever it takes to resolve this.”
“I’m not here to serve any individual, and I’m not here to serve any political party. I’m here to serve the people of Minnesota,” O’Malley said.
Walz said the fraud prevention program was created with the help of a third-party forensics company called WayPoint, led by forensic accountant and attorney Josiah Lamb.
“In our current capacity, we are working with the BCA to build out this anti-fraud toolkit, which will include policies and procedures specifically designed to address fraud risks, which can be used enterprise-wide to help prevent fraud in the future,” Lamb said.
The governor said the state’s contract with the company is worth “up to $200,000” and will be “spread across all state agencies.”
Walz says he takes “responsibility” for fraud and defends his COVID policies
The Feeding Our Future scandal, the the nation’s largest COVID fraud schemehas received renewed attention from the Trump administration, sparking a flurry of federal immigration enforcement activity in Minnesota and fueling the talking points of his Republican gubernatorial challengers.
In response to Walz’s announcement Friday, candidate and current GOP state Rep. Kristen Robbins said the governor’s fraud prevention program “should be his dismissal.”
Republican Senator Jordan Rasmusson said in response to the announced program that a “statewide program integrity director is not something you need if your commissioners are doing their jobs well at all.” Resmusson added that Minnesotans “expect their government to provide strong oversight of our welfare programs.”
On Friday, Walz said Minnesota’s ‘generosity’ was being “abused by an organized group of fraudsters and criminals,” and that he will “take responsibility” for the failures that led to the massive theft of COVID relief funds. He conceded that his office “should have kept Minnesotans better informed about what was happening.”
“We have and have, as with COVID, as in any other situation, I take full responsibility for it. I think, and I will certainly acknowledge it to the people of Minnesota and the press here, that I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of communicating that hard work has been done,” Walz said.
He also said the federal government had “removed the guardrails” during the pandemic and that “the guiding principle was to move the money.”
“Our goal was to make sure that we could move that money so that people could eat, that they had shelter and that they had vaccines, but it also opened the door to relaxing the guardrails and committing fraud,” he said.
While taking blame for the fraud scandal, Walz also said his 2021 attempt to freeze funding for a Feeding Our Future-related organization was thwarted by the courts.
“I said, ‘Don’t pay them,’ and they said, ‘You can’t do that, you don’t have that authority.’ I said, ‘Don’t pay them, let them sue me.’ They did that and they won, and we paid them, and then they got busted and went to jail afterwards,” Walz said.
Walz also defended his COVID policies that critics labeled draconian, leading to multiple — and ultimately failed — lawsuits, including more than mask mandates.
“I will not apologize for making Minnesota one of the safest states during COVID,” he said.
In September, Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said in addition to the Feeding Our Future case, there is fraud related to the state’s Housing Stabilization Services and autism services billions of dollars stolen in taxpayer money.”
Walz recently announced new audits for up to 14 social programs in Minnesota which officials consider a “high risk” of fraud. A state Department of Human Services official told WCCO that the inspector general’s office is currently investigating more than 1,300 reported cases of fraud in those programs and has recovered about $50 million.
Walz: Trump’s attacks on Somalis are ‘racially motivated’
President Trump’s recent focus on Somali-American Minnesotanswhich he called ‘garbage’, seems to be tied to the Feeding our future case.
There are now more than 80 suspects in the casemany of whom are of Somali descent, although the group’s founder and alleged mastermind, Aimee Bock, is White. So far, 61 people have been convicted and more investigations are ongoing.
U.S. Census Bureau data shows that more than 107,000 people identified as Somali across Minnesota, including more than 80,000 in the Twin Cities.
Earlier this month, Trump called Minnesota a “center of fraudulent money laundering activities”, with his government now is investigating whether stolen money was funneled to the Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate Al Shabaab.
And in recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has sent out a message dozens of federal agents to Minnesotaparticularly the Twin Cities, as part of “Operation MetrosurgeMr. Trump also previously ordered a reinvestigation of all green card holders from Somalia and more than a dozen other countries, adding that he would do so. terminate temporary protected status for Somalis in Minnesota.
Walz said Friday that the president’s actions “do nothing to address immigration” or “fraud.”
“The absolute recklessness in doing this and targeting a specific community is unconscionable,” Walz said. “It is very specifically targeted and very racially motivated towards a Somali community that matters enormously here.”
Walz also applauded the comments GOP State Senator Jim Abelerwho recently wrote a letter to Mr. Trump criticizing his statements about Minnesota’s Somali community.
“I would like to acknowledge that basic decency has not been a surprise to anyone here, but Senator Jim Abeler’s willingness to stand up and point out that this should be the simplest thing in the world,” Walz said. “Then the President of the United States calls a whole group of people trash and our state garbage and hellTo just deny that, you can still be very conservative.”
Luxury cars, luxury holidays, foreign transfers
Newly released evidence also provides the clearest picture yet of how the Feeding Our Future fraudsters operate hundreds of millions of dollars evaporated intended to feed Minnesota children during the pandemic.
CBS News has obtained dozens of sample copies, revealing luxury vacations, luxury cars and foreign transfers, all funded by taxpayer dollars, intended to feed children in need.
Photos and documents show fraudsters booking overwater villas in the Maldives, buying gold jewelry in Dubai and sending wads of cash abroad.
Some defendants purchased lakefront property in Minnesota, first-class airline tickets and luxury cars.
U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen said this is more evidence that greed was the primary motivation for the fraud.
‘Enormous. An order of magnitude greater than any fraud ever prosecuted in the United States,” he said. “What we can say from that enormous amount of evidence is that the overriding motive of all these individuals was their self-enrichment and their self-indulgence. And that is where they spent the vast majority of the money.”
There are also indications that money is moving abroad, including to China.
This story will be updated.
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