Comer claims whistleblowers warned Walz for years about Minnesota fraud and were told to 'stand down'
· Fox News
House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said Minnesota state employees warned Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison for years about alleged fraud in state-administered programs, with some being told to "stand down" or face retaliation.
Comer and Republican lawmakers peppered Walz and Ellison with questions during Wednesday's House hearing on the massive fraud scandal in the state after a months-long probe by the House Oversight Committee.
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Much of the inquiry centered on what they knew about the fraud and when they knew it.
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"After months of bringing in the whistleblowers... they testified under oath that they had been warning Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison for years about the fraud, and they were told to stand down," Comer told "The Ingraham Angle" on Wednesday.
He alleged that some employees were retaliated against because Walz and Ellison didn't want to hurt their base of "welfare recipients, especially that big Somali voting bloc."
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have charged multiple people with stealing more than $240 million from the federal Child Nutrition Program through the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future. The probe has since widened to investigate multiple state-run programs for potential fraud. Childcare providers receiving state funding, mainly within the Somali community, are also under scrutiny.
Comer said that he and his investigators spoke to 30 state employees who administer these programs.
"What they said is, there are groups that specialize in going in and getting these Somalis set up in these fake businesses. The government employees can tell right off the bat whether they're fake, whether they're over billing and [engaging in] suspicious activity," he said, adding that the whistleblowers were mostly Democrats.
"They warned Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison, and time after time, they were, 'Don't worry about it. Stand down.' Because that was a huge voting bloc for the Democrat Party in Minnesota."
Both Walz and Ellison previously pushed back on any accusations that they knowingly allowed fraud in Minnesota's social programs and have accused Republicans of politicizing the situation.
Fox News Digital's Andrew Mark Miller and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.