The Ryan Thorpe/Chris Rufo City Journal column “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer” is, as Drudge would say, impacting. It attracted the attention of the White House and elicited President Trump’s statement that he has terminated Teporary Protected Status for Somalis in Minnesota.
The Star Tribune story by Christopher Vondracek on Trump’s statement is a glorified editorial of the party-line lyin’ kind. Vondracek baldly asserts: “Trump’s post Friday evening alleged without evidence the misappropriation of ‘BILLIONS’ of dollars in Minnesota and blamed Gov. Tim Walz.”
I take it that Vondracek refers to the “BILLIONS” part of Trump’s statement — the “BILLIONS” that have been misappropriated by Somali perpetrators in the frauds that we have covered to a faretheewell on Power Line. The Feeding Our Future case by itself amounts to at least $300 million. The two trials and 77 convictions produced in the case so far have set forth the overwhelming evidence.
A variety of frauds on other welfare programs has moved the needle to billions, according to Joe Thompson, the chief prosecutor of these crimes in the United States Attorney’s Office for Minnesota. Mr. Thompson has proved over and over again that he has the evidence in the Feeding Our Future fraud and similiar cases featuring Somali perpetrators. The Feeding Our Future case opened the window onto these other cases.
To take one example, Asha Farhan Hassan was the first defendant charged in a $14 million fraud autism scheme this past September. Thompson stated in the related press release (emphasis added):
Today’s charges mark the first in the ongoing investigation into fraud in the EIDBI Autism Program. To be clear, this is not an isolated scheme. From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen BILLIONS of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.
Farhan was a double dipper. She was also implicated and charged in in the Feeding Our Future fraud.
Star Tribune reporter Sarah Nelson quoted Thompson’s statement in her story on the charge against Farhan. Nelson also reported that Farhan intends to plead guilty. That would be on account of the evidence supporting the charges.
Thompson’s statement was also quoted in Brandi Bennett’s Star Tribune op-ed column “Welcome to the land of 10,000 scams.” Bennett gets the facts straight in her column.
Vondracek must not read his own paper. He is a hack.
I wrote about the Farhan case in “Feeding Our Fraud: Inside the Walz campaign.” I included video of Lou Raguse’s report on the case for KARE 11. Raguse’s story has Thompson on camera citing the “BILLIONS” lost in these cases.
After quoting Trump in the story linked above, Vondracek quotes Minnesota Governor Tim Walz without comment: “Walz responded on X: ‘It’s not surprising that the president has chosen to broadly target an entire community. This is what he does to change the subject.’”
This — pointing the finger at Trump — is actually what Walz does to change the subject. Vondracek could have commented to this effect if he were so inclined.
The design of the defrauded welfare programs by Democrat legislators and the nonfeasance of the Walz administration are substantial contributing factors to the billions of dollars of taxpayer funds stolen by Somali perpetrators. The “BILLIONS” have all been stolen under the auspices of the Walz adminsitration.
Walz is running for reelection and has done nothing but try to deflect blame for his nonfeasance, going so far as to point the finger at Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann in the massive Feeding Our Future case. Judge Guthmann released an unprecedented statement responding to Walz and the Star Tribune:
On February 26, 2022, the Star Tribune reported on a federal investigation of FOF. The article included the following false statement: “In April 2021, Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann told the department it didn’t have the authority to stop payments and ordered the department to resume payments.” Since February, that Star Tribune quote has been repeated or paraphrased on many occasions by many other media outlets. The same media sources reported that, in her April 4, 2022, testimony to the Minnesota Senate, the Commissioner of the Education stated that the MN Department of Education tried to stop payments to FOF, only to be ordered by Judge Guthmann to resume payments. That is false. Then, when federal indictments were announced this week, many new reports were published. On September 22, 2022, Governor Tim Walz told the media that the Minnesota Department of Education attempted to end payments to FOF because of possible fraud, but that Judge Guthmann ordered payments to continue in April 2021. That is also false.
As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the “serious deficiencies” that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.
In the first part of “Four illuminatinions in the life of an online scribe,” I wrote that my hatred of the Star Tribune has driven me on Power Line for the past 23 years. Vondracek and his ilk up and down the ranks of the paper are what I was talking about.
