WASHINGTON – Gov. Tim Walz will use the platform given him by congressional investigators into fraud in Minnesota to detail his anti-fraud measures and attack the Trump administration for what he called “political retribution on an unparalleled scale.”
In written testimony submitted to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Walz said he is prepared “as I have always been – to have a serious conversation with our federal partners about how to ensure fraudsters cannot take advantage of Minnesota taxpayers.”
“But even as we confront issues similar to all of our sister states, the people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” Walz said in his testimony. “Under the guise of combating fraud, the federal government has flooded Minnesota with masked, untrained, and unaccountable agents who are wreaking havoc in our communities.”
Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison were asked by Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., to appear before his panel Wednesday at the second hearing he’s held on fraud in Minnesota’s social service programs.
Plenty of fireworks are expected at the hearing as many of its GOP members are among the most conservative in Congress, with constituents who want to see Minnesota punished for its defense of immigrants targeted by the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge.
In his opening statement, Comer will accuse Walz and Ellison of ignoring the acts of fraudsters who he said bilked the federal government.
Related: What Trump’s war on fraud actually looks like
“While Governor Walz hesitated, taxpayers lost billions. Attorney General Ellison has likewise claimed his office was aggressively holding fraudsters accountable, but when his statements were tested against the record, they fell apart,” Comer’s written opening statement says.
Comer will also say his panel has spoken with more than 30 whistleblowers “many of them current employees and Democrats who say they were ignored, retaliated against, and even surveilled for raising concerns.”
Walz’s message, meanwhile, will focus on Trump administration actions in Minnesota that drew national attention and condemnation.
“The images of this brutal campaign are seared into our collective conscience,” the governor’s written testimony says. “The fragile innocence of the five-year-old boy in a bunny hat being led away from his family. The maddening cruelty of a barely clothed man – a U.S. citizen – being dragged from his house in the dead of winter. The sheer devastation we feel at seeing the lifeless bodies of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”
The governor will note that “these are only some of the more visible aspects of this horribly misguided campaign.
“On a daily basis, in ways large and small, the federal government flouts court orders and tramples on the constitutional rights of Minnesotans,” Walz’s written testimony says.
Ellison, meanwhile, will also shift to the impact of the Trump administration’s immigrant crackdown in Minnesota in his opening remarks.
“Operation Metro Surge did nothing to address fraud in our State,” Ellison’s written testimony says. “It decimated our economy, it hurt and scarred our people, and it dealt a severe blow to fraud enforcement efforts in Minnesota.”
Ellison will also say that if the Trump administration “were serious about combating fraud, it would have surged forensic accountants, not masked immigration agents, to Minnesota.”
