Yesterday the Star Tribune published the story “Trump claims Minnesota lost billions to fraud. The evidence to date isn’t close.” The story runs under the byline of Emmy Martin and Jeffrey Meitrodt. Martin is a Star Tribune business intern. Meitrodt is a Star Tribune reporter. The Star Tribune allows no comments on their story.
In substance the story is grossly stupid, incompetent, lazy, and false. It opens accurately, stating that President Trump claims that “Democrats allowed a $1+ billion heist to take place” in Minnesota, but it’s downhill from there. Martin and Meitrodt write: “A review of court records shows the alleged fraud uncovered to date is closer to $152 million, though that number is expected to grow as ongoing state and federal investigations into the state programs continue.”
Let’s pause here. Indictments in the Feeding Our Future case have now been brought against 78 defendants to date. The newest of the 78 cases was charged on November 24. Two trials have been held. The 78 indictments have resulted in seven guilty verdicts and 50 guilty pleas. The indictments, the trials, and the pleas are all full of evidence that by itself establishes fraud in the amount of some $300 million committed by a large cast of almost exclusively Somali defendants. Thus the senitivity.
I set forth the larger context of the fraud, most recently, in the City Journal column “Minnesota’s Somali fraud problem.” My notes here assume some familiarity with the larger context.
The summary of claims below was received into evidence in the second of the two trials as Government Exhibit X-1. I attended the trial every day — Jeffrey Meitrodt sat next to me. He is apprently incapable of embarrassment. Exhibit X-1 itemizes some $240 million in almost wholly fraudulent claims.
X-1 FOF Summary Claims by Site and Year by Scott Johnson
By the same token, the summary of claims below was recevied into evidence in the first of the two trials as Government Exhibit N-5 (the exhibit sticker is cut off at the bottom right of the PDF below). Exhibit N-5 summarizes $49 million in fraudulent claims attributable to the Empire defendants, only $6 million of which was submitted under Feeding Our Future. The remaining $43 million was submitted by Partners in Nutrition and thus not included in the $240 million above.
There is more in the way of “evidence.” To take one example, the Haji Salad guilty plea acknowledges an additional $19 million of fraudulent claims also submitted under the auspices of Partners in Nutrition. A transcript of the plea hearing is easily accessible.
Here we have some $300 million in documented fraud — claims actually recieved into “evidence” at trial. How Martin and Meitodt arrive at $152 million is a mystery. They don’t say. They don’t show their homework.
Sites under Partners in Nutrition committed more than $200 million worth of fraud, not all of which has been charged. In the food program alone, the fraud therefore runs to approximately $500 million.
Martin and Meitrodt refer to the “alleged fraud” in the cases (“A review of court records shows the alleged fraud uncovered to date is closer to $152 million”). However, the “fraud” has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt in the convictions at trial and the guilty pleas before, during, and after them. Judge Nancy Brasel has upheld the verdicts and accepted the pleas precisely because evidence of the fraud is overwhelming.
Investigation of the Feeding Our Future fraud over the past four years has opened the window on related Minnesota Medicaid frauds with a similarly ethnic Somali cast of defendants. This is how the Martin and Meitrodt account for them:
The billion-dollar figure first surfaced in July when Joseph Thompson, acting U.S. attorney, was investigating Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services program. In September, he announced charges against defendants who allegedly defrauded through the program and said it was the “first wave” of fraud cases connected to Medicaid-related programs.
But Thompson, who did not respond to the Star Tribune’s request for comment, has not offered evidence to support the billion-dollar figure.
Joe Thompson previewed the cases to come as Interim United States Attorney earlier this year. He has seen the evidence and has made several public statements explaining the scope of the fraud. For some reason Martin and Meitrodt do not bother to quote him. Please listen to him speak in the video below.
Watch🎥
Acting US Attorney Joe Thompson in this morning’s press conference: “I’ve been prosecuting these cases for years and I have literally run out of ways to express what is happening in our state… and to explain the coming iceberg I see as we reckon with the fraud.” pic.twitter.com/FfiAc2N61v— Minnesota House Fraud and Oversight Committee (@MN_Fraud_Cmte) September 18, 2025
Minnesota has 14 “waivered” Medicaid programs. Among them are the Housing Stabilization Services program (eight charged, two guilty pleas so far) and EIDBI autism program (one charged with expected guilty plea forthcoming). Thompson sent up a red flag on these waivered programs earlier this year. He has warned that the fraud involved will amount to “billions” and that it cannot be handled solely by federal proseuctions. As he says in the video, “The level of fraud in these programs is staggering.”
KARE 11’s Lou Raguse must have had a hand in uploading the 87-page search warrant in the HSS cases this past July. It too is full of “evidence.” Page 23 of the affidavit underlying the search warrant includes the chart below of the growth in this utterly fraudylent program.
Thompson hasn’t yet laid out all the evidence. Based on what the evidnece at his disposal, however, he puts the ultimate losses due to fraud in the billions. The fraud was in process as he spoke. He was begging the powers-that-be to stop it. They — Thompson and his collegues — cannot prosecute our way out of it. The Star Tribune disputes none of this. They simply treat Thompson as a partisan stand-in for Trump.
Walz himself doesn’t dispute Thompson’s estimate. Based on the red flags Thompson is waving — and perhaps because he has an inkling that Thompson is on to something that might damage him — Walz himself has suspended the 14 waivered Medicaid programs. As Jack Benny might have said, he’s thinking about it. In the meantime, the Star Tribune has undertake Operation Walz in a fraud of its very own making.
