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The Pentagon is asking military attorneys to travel to Minnesota on assignment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, CBS News has learned, after the Justice Department called for more resources to be surged to the state.
The Justice Department is also in talks with the Pentagon to send some of its forensic auditors to Minnesota to assist with fraud investigations and potentially to testify in court, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The Pentagon request for attorneys seen by CBS News describes the short-term volunteer assignment, which would begin in March, as a detail to serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys in the state. It does not specify the focus of the assignment or required subject matter experience. A U.S. official told CBS News the Justice Department has asked the Pentagon for additional attorneys.
The call for resources comes as the Justice Department is continuing and expanding its investigation into COVID-era welfare fraud in Minnesota. Nearly all of the defendants accused or convicted of defrauding a federal program to feed hungry children are of Somali descent. The Trump administration often refers to it as “Somali-fraud.”
The city of Minneapolis is also the center of the largest deployment of Department of Homeland Security agents in its history, who are there both for the fraud probe and to carry out immigration enforcement as part of what the Trump administration has dubbed “Operation Metro Surge.”
The effort has the support of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the source added.
Last week, Minneapolis’ top fraud prosecutor and several others resigned, in part over concern that the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was not being probed as a civil rights case, and due to pressure to investigate Good’s widow. The FBI is not currently investigating the agent who shot Good and prosecutors in the department’s Civil Rights Division were previously ordered not to get involved.
The additional resources from the Pentagon will help to augment the other efforts by the Justice Department to temporarily detail prosecutors from other neighboring districts in the coming weeks, including from parts of Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin and North and South Dakota, the source added.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota recently lost about 10 prosecutors, some of whom handled criminal cases including the high-profile “Feeding Our Futures” fraud investigation. Career prosecutors who remain have largely been sidelined, sources tell CBS.
The Pentagon has not responded to a request for comment on how many attorneys are needed in Minneapolis and for what. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time military judge advocates have been used for non-military purposes. They have stepped in as immigration judges and were also called upon last summer to prosecute misdemeanor cases in Washington, D.C., during President Trump’s crime crackdown.
Just over a week ago, CNN reported that the Pentagon is working to surge dozens of military lawyers to Minneapolis as part of immigration enforcement actions.
