Yesterday Acting United States Attorney for Minnesota unveiled the first charge in what is expected to be a case involving a billion-dollar Medicaid fraud in Minnesota’s EIDBI benefit program. The defendant — Asha Farhan Hassan — is also the defendant number 76 in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud case. She will plead guilty some time soon.
For some reason or other, Ms. Farhan is not described as a “Minneapolis woman” in the local media coverage of this monumental scandal. KARE 11’s Lou Raguse does not even mention the involvement of the Twin Cities Somali community in the ripoff. His story is “Feds charge first Autism Center fraud case stemming from Feeding our Future investigation.” (“Asha Hassan, owner of Smart Therapy Center, is accused of stealing $14 million in taxpayer money by bribing parents to enroll their kids for phony autism services.) I have posted the video below.
The Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, the Housing Stabilization Services fraud scandal, and the EIDBI autism benefit scandal have all taken place under the nose of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Walz too is conspicuous by his absence in the media coverage of these scandals.
I sent Walz a set of questions about the Feeding Our Future case for my Free Beacon column “From Feeding the Kids to Fleecing the Government: Inside the Country’s Largest COVID Fraud.” Walz has bragged with respect to the colossal fraud in the Feeding Our Future case that “we caught it very early.” He declined to respond to any of the related questions I submitted to him in writing—twice, the second time in response to an email asking me to submit my questions to another email address.
Among other things, Walz has blamed Ramsey County District Judge John Guthman for the bleeding in Feeding. Judge Guthman released an unprecedent statement refuting Walz (and the Star Tribune) for its attribution of blame to him.
This week Kamala Harris has gone on a publicity tour to promote her memoir of the 2024 presidential campaign. In it she reveals that Walz was her second choice for running mate. First choice was Pete Buttigieg. She rejected him, however, because he is openly homosexual. She went with the guy whose effeminate theatrics made him a laughingstock on the campaign trail. How he will ever live Harris’s revelation down is beyond me.
Last week Walz announced his bid for a third consecutive gubernatorial term. Given the old scandals, the new scandals, and the Harris revelations, that should be quite a stretch. The timing of the new scandal and the Harris revelation should be somewhat inconvenient for his reelection campaign. I imagine the conversation inside the campaign must be going something like this among his (unnamed) advisers.
“What are we going to say about the autism scandal?”
“Gun violence!”
“Well, the frauds aren’t our fault.”
“But doesn’t the buck stop with the governor?”
“We know where the buck stopped. It wasn’t with us.”
“Yeah, he’s still driving his Scout truck and pretending he can load a shotgun.”
“Gun violence!”
“Again?”
“It’s a golden oldie. It’s a classic.”
“Can we point the finger at Keith Ellison? He doesn’t seem to have had any idea what was going on in the Feeding Our Future case when his office was handling it.”
“I’m not sure we want to go there. Remember he told the Somali group he met with, ‘Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible’?”
“Wait — that’s what Ellison told Walz!”
“We don’t want to get into that argument. Neither of us can win it.”
“Maybe we can talk to our friends at the Star Tribune on background.”
In any event, more to come.
