The Democrat-media wagons are circling in defense of the Somalis recently indicted for fraud in Minnesota by the feds. Federal prosecutors have now charged over 86 individuals (78 of Somali ancestry), with 59 convictions secured, alleging theft of more than $1 billion from programs like child nutrition, housing aid, and autism therapy.
The alleged crimes have a political twist, as they involve a growing block of solid Democrat votes in Minnesota’s largest urban area – the Twin Cities – and enough to capture the state politically for the Democrat Farm Labor Party of Minnesota forever. A House Oversight Committee inquiry, launched on Wednesday, targets Gov. Tim Walz (D) and AG Keith Ellison (D) for alleged inaction and data deletions to avoid “political backlash” from the Somali voting bloc. The outfall from the arrests could be huge.
THE ALLEGED CRIMES
While there have been periodic small-time arrests for fraud in Minnesota since the feds started their investigation in 2018, it took the Manhattan Institute to blow the roof off the criminality in November:
Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute uncovered a web of fraud involving Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future and other organizations in a bombshell report. Thorpe and Rufo noted that, in many cases, members of Minnesota’s Somali community were perpetrators of fraud. They added that federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia, which is how Al-Shabaab got the cash.
This is the real eye-opener from that report (emphasis added):
A confidential source told Thorpe and Rufo that “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”
“Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way,” a former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force told Thorpe and Rufo.
The key fraud schemes include:
- Feeding Our Future: A nonprofit allegedly funneled $250 million+ in federal child nutrition funds for phantom meals during the pandemic, with kickbacks funding luxuries and remittances abroad.
- Housing Stabilization Services: Over $104 million stolen by billing for nonexistent homeless aid.
- Autism Therapy Fraud: Tens of millions defrauded via fake diagnoses and services, including kickbacks to parents.
Investigations in 2025 have added layers to the various federal investigations in Minnesota that have been ongoing since 2018, including US Treasury probes into potential ties to al-Shabaab (a Somali terrorist group) and SBA audits of PPP loans during the COVID plandemic to implicated nonprofits.
This shocker sums it all up (emphasis added):
“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. The challenge is immense, but our work continues,” [US Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joe] Thompson said in a statement.
Billions of stolen taxpayer dollars. Every cent sent from Somalis overseas (including fraudulent gains) support the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab in some way.
And the DFL (Democrat Party) has been slow-walking investigations and prosecutions of the fraud for years.
WHY THE DFL LOOKED THE OTHER WAY
Several critics, including various whistleblowers, claim Minnesota state Democrats prioritized avoiding racism accusations over enforcement of the law. This is from The New York Times (!) on 29 November:
During the pandemic, Feeding Our Future demanded that the MN government approve their fraudulent feeding sites for the Somali community, threatening that extra scrutiny or slow approvals would be confronted with a lawsuit accusing the MN government of racism. Prosecutors allege that the Democrat-led government turned a blind eye because they did not want to alienate the Somali community.
The Minnesota governor and attorney general blinked and succumbed to the blackmail to avoid one of the worst possible stigmas in the eyes of the corrupt Democrat Party, i.e., to be labeled “racists.” That label trumps the rule of law in their warped world.
But that’s hardly the only reason. Before we get to those reasons, here are some of the defenses thrown up to excuse the fraud.
DEMOCRAT-MEDIA COMPLEX TO THE RESCUE
Seeking to hold onto a significant part of their voter base, Minnesota Democrats have robustly defended the Somali community (over 76,000 strong) against what they deem to be politically-motivated broad-brush attacks by President Trump and Republicans. They emphasize that fraud is isolated, not cultural, and decry the scandal’s weaponization for xenophobia (hold that thought until later in this article).
Notable examples for top DFL officials speaking up:
- Gov. Tim Walz (D): In a December 4, 2025, press conference, Walz called Trump’s comments “vile” and warned of “bloodshed” from inflammatory rhetoric. Responding to al-Shabaab claims, he stated: “Do not paint an entire group of people with that same brush, demonizing them, putting them at risk, when there is no proof of that.” Walz highlighted prosecutions (”Those people are going to jail”) while noting Minnesota’s prosperity attracts criminals universally, and issued an executive order encouraging fraud reporting to all state employees.
- Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN): The Somali-born congresswoman, whose district includes much of the affected area, posted a video on December 4, 2025, accusing Trump of “deflecting” from his failures by targeting her community: “We are resilient and, despite the president’s disgusting remarks, we will continue to thrive.” Allies like Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) praised Omar as a “bold, selfless public servant” standing against “vile racism.” Note: Some fraud defendants, like activist Guhaad Hashi Said, were former Omar campaign aides, but she faces no charges yet (hold that thought!).
- DFL Leaders: Minnesota House DFL Floor Leader Jamie Long accused Trump of “scapegoating our Somali neighbors” to distract from economic issues like grocery costs. DFL Chair Ken Martin echoed: “Scapegoating won’t bring down the cost of groceries. His policies are driving up the cost of everything.” The party has called for stronger anti-fraud measures without ethnic targeting.
- Other Figures: Former U.S. Attorney Andy Luger (Biden/Obama appointee) told the Star Tribune the fraud was about “getting rich,” not terrorism. Somali-American ex-investigator Kayseh Magan, in a Minnesota Reformer op-ed, condemned the fraud but urged Democrats to address it “more forcefully” while rejecting “right-wing demagoguery.”
Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled legacy media have framed their coverage around systemic failures, pandemic chaos, and anti-immigrant bias, contrasting with conservative media’s focus on ethnic ties and Democratic complicity. Never mind the underlying criminality! Some examples are provided in this table (sources noted therein):
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RACISM AND CULTURAL BIAS
The Democrats are trying to shift the narrative to one of politically motivated racism and cultural bias as opposed to the true narrative of enforcing the rule of law against criminals hip-deep in fraud schemes that are bilking taxpayers.
But what about a simple cultural comparison in the context of rule of law in both Somalia and the US? After all, the Somalis are culturally disinclined to assimilate into American society. The differences in the two societies are noted in the table below:
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In short, the two societies could not be more different, which explains to some extent why Somalis do not choose to integrate into American society. The other main reason, of course, is because many if not most of them are radicalized Islamists.
Now let’s look at the differences in the rule of law in Somalia versus the US, as summarized in the below table:
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In short, Somalia runs on clan-based customary law backed by kinship and collective responsibility while the US runs on impersonal, codified law enforced by a strong central state apparatus. One is a decentralized, kinship-driven system adapted to stateless pastoralism; the other is a centralized, individualistic system built for an industrial nation-state. The two systems of law could not be further apart from each other. And the seeds for the fraud in Minnesota were sown.
THE POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
A few dots to connect:
Democrat Maine Representative Deqa Dhalac (a Somali from South Portland, Maine) says her goal in American government is to get the taxpayers of America to give money to Somalia. She says, “We must pay for the people of Somalia and pay for the development of their country.”
Ilhan Omar held her 2018 campaign victory party in the restaurant owned by Salim Ahmed Said. He “was convicted in March 2025 on 21 counts including wire fraud, federal programs bribery and money laundering. He allegedly pocketed $5 million from the scheme funneling money through Feeding Our Future for his own enrichments rather than for the child nutrition program.”
Ilhan Omar campaign official Guhaad Hashi Said, pleaded guilty in August to running fake food site Advance Youth Athletic Development, and pocketing $3.2 million from the program. Note that Omar maintains she was completely unaware of illegal activity, even though she introduced the 2020 MEALS Act bill that made the $250 million fraud scheme possible. There are no such things as coincidences!
The New York Post noted on Thursday that Minnesota Democratic lawmakers, including Attorney General Keith Ellison (a Somali-American), were handed over $53,000 in campaign contributions by fraudsters who ripped off taxpayer cash meant to feed children. “AG Keith Ellison, his councilman son, mayor Jacob Frey, Representative Ilhan Omar and others received cash from the scammers who siphoned off some $250 million, largely through nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Many did so after meeting the crooks, raising questions about how much they knew.”
It is still early days yet!
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
It is a virtual certainty that more corrupt ties between Minnesota Democrats (DFL) and the Somali fraudsters will be made known in the ensuing weeks. The Democrat-media complex’s defense of the indefensible is a leaky boat destined to sink to the bottom. The welfare grift in Minnesota that stole over $1 billion from taxpayers is a hot button for most law-abiding Americans because theft is an easy crime to understand.
Elected Democrats may have benefited themselves from kickbacks (or at least campaign donations) from the fraudsters, but perhaps there is another even more important motivation than money. The Biden regime policy was to relocate “amnesty-seekers” to various cities around the US for political reasons, with amnesty being awarded to anyone seeking it without regard to whether or not an amnesty claim was valid. The goal was to get as many people through the open border as possible. The way to entice them to stay locked down in a particular urban area was to capture them through the distribution of free welfare funded by US taxpayers. And that scheme is becoming increasingly obvious:
1. Offer amnesty to as many people as possible (in violation of US immigration laws).
2. Provide social security numbers.
3. Subsidized US non-profits to help relocated new arrivals to selected US cities.
4. Place new arrivals in US taxpayer-funded welfare programs (primarily in blue states).
5. Get them on the Democrat-controlled voter rolls (and associated databases).
6. Vote on behalf of them using mail-in ballots to guarantee fraudulent Democrat election victories.
7. Use those new numbers to skew the future census to increase the number of Democrat-dominated districts.
This is the REAL reason why the Democrat-media complex are attempting to spin the Minnesota fraud schemes and attack President Trump and those involved in the investigations and upcoming prosecutions. They know that the scandal it is a direct threat to Democrat hegemony in Minnesota (and in other Blue states where similar schemes will be uncovered in the days ahead).
No wonder Ilhan Omar is in a panic these days. If there was any justice in the world, her days in the US would be numbered.
The end.
This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission
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