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As the city of Minneapolis faces a $1 billion welfare scandal, Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen spoke to Fox News Digital about his belief that Gov. Tim Walz is not only directly responsible for the controversy, but suggested that a “cover up” that’s “worse than Watergate” is at play.
Walz’s role in what’s been labeled by prosecutors as the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, stemming from allegations that the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future and its associates defrauded federal child-nutrition programs for hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19 aid, has been a major topic of conversation in the gubernatorial race in recent weeks.
“In Minnesota, I don’t think that there’s any way to cut it other than to say the buck has to stop somewhere,” Jensen told Fox News Digital. “And it’s always been that the buck stops at the governor’s desk. Arguably, the governor is the CEO of the state of Minnesota and the business of the government. And Tim Walz has been derelict in doing his duties, and he’s absolutely corrupted common sense.”
The dereliction, Jensen explained, is evident when one examines a timeline he says shows Walz knew about Feeding Our Future fraud far earlier than he has admitted and then misled Minnesotans about his administration’s response.
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“Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Education knew in 2020 that there was a problem… but they didn’t get the FBI involved until 2021,” Jensen said. “And yet they’ve made claims that as soon as they learned about it, they got the FBI involved. That’s not true. Their timeline’s a year off.”
Jensen argues the delay was not just mismanagement but part of a broader pattern of deflection and dishonesty from the governor’s office.
“At the end of the day, he’s demonstrated a very skilled approach to deflecting, so that he’s not being honest,” Jensen said.
Jensen cited several examples of actions by Walz that he views as deflecting the blame onto others, including in 2022 after the first indictments in the scandal were handed down by the FBI and U.S. Attorney, and Walz placed blame on district court judge John Guthman for allegedly forcing the state to continue fraudulent payments.
In what was described by media outlets at the time as a “rare public rebuke,” Guthman fired back at Walz accusing him of making “inaccurate statements.”
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“When Judge Guthman did that, then you saw Tim Walz and Keith Ellison try for someone else they could blame it on,” Jensen told Fox News Digital. “So they blamed it on the FBI and said, ‘Well, the FBI told us we had to keep paying because we’re not supposed to interfere with their investigation.’ And the FBI said, ‘We didn’t make you continue fraudulent payments to the Feeding Our Future agency.’”
Jensen told Fox News Digital that the “elephant in the room” is what else will come out in the future about the “cover up” of the scandal.
“The underlying question has to be: is there something more nefarious than this?” Jensen said.
“Is there literally sequestration of funds that at some point in time could be paid back to people when things have calmed down? Is there some pay-to-play scheme that we haven’t yet been informed about? That’s what’s really frightening, because if that’s the case, then you have to, you have to ask yourself the question: will there be at some level a need for criminal prosecution to take place of some Minnesota elected officials?”
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The welfare fraud controversy has received the attention of the federal government in recent days.
The Small Business Administration announced it is investigating the network of Somali groups in Minnesota that it says are tied to the massive COVID fraud scandal highlighting alleged systemic failures by Walz’s team to properly audit public funds.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has claimed that “because of Governor Walz’s negligence, criminals — including Somali terrorists — stole nearly $1 billion from the program while children suffered.” He is leading the probe into Walz’s role in the Feeding Our Future scandal.
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President Donald Trump also recently announced a flurry of new actions to crack down and investigate fraud schemes in Minnesota, which he has assailed as a “hub of money laundering activity,” and cited as the basis of his decision to terminate deportation protections for hundreds of Somali migrants.
Senior Trump administration officials announced fresh investigations this week, including a new Treasury Department probe into how taxpayer dollars were allegedly diverted to the terrorist organization al-Shabaab, according to Secretary Scott Bessent.
“With where it’s gone from the beginning to now, recognizing that there’s been an interest in covering this up, for many people it has some of the haunting reminders of Watergate,” Jensen told Fox News Digital.
“And yet, in this way, this time, it could even be worse, because it’s possible that there’s something far more nefarious than simply covering something up. It could be a pay to play scheme that involves elected officials.”
Fox News Digital asked Jensen, who ran against Walz in 2022, what he believes the governor’s legacy is after two terms in office.
“Tim Walz’ legacy right now would be fraud at an unprecedented level, and I think from his policies, I think people would say he seemed to worship the ground that AOC and Bernie Sanders walked on,” Jensen explained. “He went from someone who many people who knew him earlier in life thought of as a moderate person to a person who was literally living on the five-yard line of the hard left part of the Democratic field.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey and Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
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