Yesterday the New York Post featured Douglas Murray’s column “Afghan terror and Somalia [sic] fraud shows why Trump is right on migrants” in its opinion pages. Murray credited the Rufo/Thorpe City Journal column that I wrote about this week here at City Journal and here on Power Line with the “the discovery…reported first” by them of “vast amounts of welfare and charitable fraud being carried out by the Somali residents of Minnesota.”
Murray is an accomplished reporter, columnist, and author. The Thorpe/Rufo City Journal column has drawn attention to a major story out here in flyover country. However, the story has actually been covered in the mainstream media — including, forgive me for saying so, in my own October 1 New York Post column “Vast fraud of Somali migrants, starting with Ilhan Omar, finally being exposed” (“Acting US Attorney Joe Thompson, who has prosecuted the two Feeding Our Future cases that have gone to trial so far, recently revealed expansive Medicaid fraud schemes featuring Somali perpetrators….these frauds…run into the billions of dollars”).
Murray also writes:
The revelations this week show fraud on a colossal scale. A single scheme (called “Feeding our Future”) allegedly involved some $300 million of fraud. Other schemes included the theft of millions of dollars of COVID relief funds.
Murray seems not even to understand that the Feeding Our Future fraud is the scheme involving “the theft of millions of dollars of Covid relief funds.” They are one and the same. Moreover, the massive Feeding Our Future fraud case is itself nearly four years old. “Other schemes” involved the theft of Minnesota Medicaid funds.
Murray’s attention these past four years has been directed elsewhere. That is understandable. However, Murray’s carelessness with the facts is difficult to figure. There is a Rip Van Winkle quality to Murray’s column that I find inexplicable.
FOOTNOTE: The New York Times provided early mainstream media coverage of the Feeding Our Future case in David Farenthold’s March 2022 story “F.B.I. Sees ‘Massive Fraud’ in Groups’ Food Programs for Needy Children.” I mentinoned Farenthold’s story here on Power Line in connection with a related point.
