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FIRST ON FOX: In a letter sent to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday, Trump’s education secretary blasted his handling of the massive and developing fraud crisis in the state and called on him to resign from his post over the scandal while highlighting fraud allegations within the state’s college education system.
“You have been Minnesota’s Governor since 2019,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote to Walz in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. “During that time, your careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country. As President Trump put it, you have turned Minnesota into a ‘fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.’”
At the conclusion of the scathing letter, McMahon calls on Walz to step down over the scandal.
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“Given your dereliction of the office entrusted to you by Minnesotans, I implore you to resign and make way for more capable leadership,” McMahon writes.
In addition to the fraud scandal that has garnered national headlines with nonprofits like Feeding Our Future, primarily in the Somali community, alleged to have defrauded taxpayers of at least $1 billion under Walz’s watch, McMahon’s letter focuses on findings from her department that show fraud taking place in Minnesota’s college education system.
Last week, Fox News Digital reported the Department of Education announcement that it has thwarted more than $1 billion in student aid fraud under Trump’s first year in office, including stopping suspected bots and “ghost students” from obtaining taxpayer-funded loans.
One of the “ghost students” schemes that allegedly took place in Minnesota left Riverland Community College averaging more than 100 potentially fraudulent applications per year, Fox News Digital reported.
In the letter to Walz, McMahon focused on the potential fraud in that area in his state and said almost 2,000 “ghost” students were found.
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“We call these fraudsters ‘ghost students’ because they were not ID-verified and often did not live in the United States, or they simply did not exist,” McMahon wrote. “In Minnesota, 1,834 ghost students were found to have received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans. They collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of the money with the college, and pocketed the rest — without attending the college at all.”
The letter mentions efforts the department has taken to crack down on “ghost students” nationwide, including “mandatory identity verification” for certain first-time applicants.
The letter also takes aim at Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been highly criticized for her close ties to some involved in the fraud scandal, saying that she borrowed “tens of thousands” in student loans and “now does not think she should have to repay, despite her generous, taxpayer-funded salary.”
Last month, a conservative watchdog group urged GOP Speaker Mike Johnson to garnish Omar’s congressional wages over her student loan debt, citing her $174,000 a year salary, Alpha News reported.
The letter claims Omar has “taken advantage” of the federal taxpayer.
The letter goes on to accuse Walz of presiding over what federal officials describe as a “massive scandal of welfare fraud” that spread across virtually every major federal assistance program. According to the letter, scammers operating in Minnesota enriched themselves by exploiting federal housing benefits, education aid, food stamps, small-business relief, and even programs meant to support elderly Americans and children with autism, all while the governor “did absolutely nothing” to stop it.
“Shame on you, Governor Walz, for allowing this to happen — and for benefiting from it,” McMahon wrote to Walz. “Stop defrauding American taxpayers. No politician is above the law, and my department, alongside every other agency under the leadership of President Trump, will continue to ensure that you will not be able to dodge accountability for your actions.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
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In a Friday press conference, Walz announced he is installing a new statewide prevention program that will work with a private firm specializing in forensic auditing.
Walz said the system was “taken advantage of by an organized group of fraudsters and criminals.”
“I take full responsibility for it,” Walz said. “I think, and I will acknowledge certainly to Minnesotans and to the press here, I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of communicating the hard work that’s being done.”
Walz’s comments did not appear to appease critics in the state, including conservative commentator Dustin Grage, who told Fox News Digital after the press conference that no one in a position of power has been fired, raising the question with some about whether accountability has truly been taken.
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“He threw out a quote that said, hey, I’m gonna take accountability, and people will run with that quote,” Grage, a columnist at Townhall.com, told Fox News Digital. “But at the end of the day, not a single bureaucrat in this state in regard to the fraud has been fired. Not a single one.”
“So, that ultimately means, at the end of the day, if he’s to blame, the only one at this point who should be held accountable is himself, because he has not shown in any actionable form that a government employee is to blame at this point. He puts it on himself and nobody has been fired. So, ultimately, at the end of the day, Minnesotans, the voters of this state, are going to have to make a decision.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.
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