The House Committee on Education and the Workforce recently hit Minnesota Governor and Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz with a subpoena over allegations of his administration’s alleged involvement with a fraudulent scheme that misappropriated taxpayer funds designated for children in need during the pandemic.
According to reports, the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future (FOF) fraudulently created false numbers of meals that it would be providing to hungry children in need. After providing these false figures to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), FOF was given approximately $250 million in taxpayer funding.
“The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce (Committee) is engaged in ongoing
oversight of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) and the Minnesota
Department of Education’s (DE) administration of federal child nutrition programs (FCNP)
and Feeding Our Future (FOF),” the letter from the committee began.
The letter noted that, as the leader of the state of Minnesota, Walz is responsible for the conduct that occurs within the state government under him. “As the chief executive and the highest ranking official in the state of Minnesota, you are responsible for the MDE and its administration of FCNPs. Article V Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of Minnesota which lays out the powers and duties of the governor, states in part that the governor “may require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive departments upon any subject relating to his duties,” and “he shall take care that the laws befaithfully executed,” the subpoena continued.
Concluding, the committee stated, “Copies of our letters to the MDE were sent to you for your awareness of our oversight of the USDA’s and the MDE’s administration of the FCNP and oversight of FOF.’ You are well aware of the multi-million-dollar fraud that has occurred under your tenure as Governor.”
However, Walz has maintained that the state government is not responsible for the massive fraud. “There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should have. So, there’s been leadership changes in these organizations since that time, and we have new leadership in sense the certainly over at the Department of Education,” he said.
In other controversies surrounding Governor Walz, The American Tribune recently reported on an investigation into his ties to China. The conservative legal organization American First Legal pointed is looking into “extensive, multi-decade entanglement” with the nation.
American First Legal claimed, “It appears Minnesota’s institutions of higher education welcomed and collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) front organizations known as Confucius Institutes during Gov. Walz’s tenure.” A press release from the conservative legal group added, “The “Confucius Institutes” are a key aspect of the Chinese Communist Party’s “soft power” influence operations in the United States.”
American First Legal Senior Vice President Reed D. Rubinstein stated, “The Trump Administration and its bipartisan partners in the Congress had no illusions about the Chinese Communist Party’s nature and intentions. Accordingly, they took strong action to expose and terminate the CCP’s influence operations in the United States, including its many Confucius Centers around the country, and to protect our research enterprise.
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