Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo provide a useful overview of the frauds we have covered over the past many years in their City Journal story “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer” (the City Journal headline is itself a quote from a confidential source). The financial support for Islamist terrorism seems to be the hook behind the breakthrough of the story into national attention, as in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s X post below.
The facts in this story are truly disgusting:
Millions in stolen Minnesota welfare dollars have been funneled to Al-Shabaab — an ISIS-aligned TERROR group.
This happened because Democrats built a system so loose, so corrupt, and so politically timid that fraudsters exploited it…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 21, 2025
In addition to pointing to the Thorpe/Rufo City Journal column I want to add a few personal notes. In garnering the attention of Speaker Johnson and others, Thorpe and Rufo have done what I sought to do in my Washington Free Beacon column on the second Feeding Our Future trial. In the opening sentence of the Free Beacon column I posed the question: “What happens when you cross a Third-World tribal culture with an urban Democratic establishment?” In the lead sentence of their third paragraph, Rufo and Thorpe write: “Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy…” That’s what I was trying to say.
Ryan Thorpe contacted me while he was conducting research for the current City Journal story. To lend Ryan a hand, I reviewed my own posts and columns on the underlying story and found much that I had forgotten, including the 2011 case of the two “Minnesota women” who literally raised money for Al Shabab and the 2018 case of Fozia Ali. They both anticipate the Thorpe/Rufo findings. In the second of these two posts I wrote:
On May 14 our local Fox affiliate (Fox 9) broadcast Jeff Baillon’s striking report “Millions of dollars in suitcases fly out of MSP, but why?” The report drew a connection among “rampant fraud in a massive state program” (i.e., Minnesota’s $250 million a year Child Care Assistance Program funding daycare providers), the locus of this fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community and cash flown overseas in suitcases out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport possibly that may fund the Al Qaeda affiliate al Shabab in Somalia.
I sent Ryan my 2018 City Journal column “Mogadishu, Minnesota.” It too intimated an al Shabab connection to Minnesota Somalis. I wrote in the introductory paragraph:
When it was noted that the carry-on bags of multiple airline passengers traveling from Minneapolis to Somalia contained millions of dollars in cash, on a regular basis, law enforcement was naturally curious to know where the money came from and where it was going. It soon emerged that millions of taxpayer dollars, and possibly much more, had been stolen through a massive scam of Minnesota’s social-services sector, specifically through fraudulent daycare claims. To make matters worse, the money appears to have wound up in areas of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab, the Islamic jihadist group responsible for numerous terrorist outrages.
I also noted Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s nonfeasance in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud in the Wall Street Journal column I wrote on Walz’s selection as Kamala Harris’s running mate last year. Walz presents a glaring example of the political dynamics supporting the frauds that Thorpe and Rufo summarize.
I worked as senior vice president and counsel for TCF Financial Corporation’s Minnesota bank for 12 years, through December 31, 2009. In that capacity I responded to subpoenas and other requests for information from federal law enforcement. I was repeatedly told over that period by federal agents that the biggest local investigation involved Somali support for terrorism. They told me repeatedly for a long time that a Minnesota federal grand jury was devoting its attention to the issue.
I have been mystified why the massive Minnesota frauds have failed to grab the attention they deserve. We have reported on them for well over a decade. Thorpe and Rufo have finally generated national attention to them. Thanks and congratulations are in order.
