Feeding Our Fraud: He Said he said

Yesterday’s trial proceedings opened with an argument about whether defendant Salim Said could play a campaign video featuring Ilhan Omar in Said’s defense. The video shows Omar talking up Safari restaurant inside the restaurant in Somali and bringing meals outside to waiting cars. Lead prosecutor Joe Thompson objected to Omar’s part in the video as an attempt to graft her prestige as a member of Congress onto Said’s defense.

Judge Brasel ultimately asked counsel for Said to edit the video to remove Omar. But that seems to have been the whole point — the video was not played during Said’s direct examination.

Playing the video in Said’s direct examination would have taken the record-braking fraud here to a higher level. It would give us the member of Congress who plowed new ground in corruption by marrying her brother for some fraudulent purpose standing at scandal central in the Feeding Our Future case, fraudster vouching for fraudster. To anyone who knows the Omar story, which I first sketched out in 2016, that would say it all. It should be the closing number in this case. Send in the clowns!

John Lennon transformed the sex of the speaker in drawing on a trippy Peter Fonda statement for the trippy Beatles’ song “She Said She Said.” Yesterday Said took the stand in his own defense. He Said he said.

What did Said say? In his direct examination, Said told the tale of his emigration from Mogadishu to his arrival in the Twin Cities with various stops along the way. Thanks to the Feeding Our Future fraud, it’s a rags to riches story. Said became a millionaire in his 30s thanks to Safari’s participation in the federal child nutrition program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future.

Said attended Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis. He started working at Safari as a ninth grade student. In eleventh grade, he says, he was stabbed by a gang member and moved to Indianapolis, where he held a number of jobs. As one thing led to another in a complicated story, he was set up by an uncle in a 2011 case that led to his conviction of forgery with intent to defraud, fraud, and theft. He later returned to Minnesota.

Led by defense counsel Adrian Montez, Said recounted his work at Safari and purchase of a share in the business for $35,000. Montez displayed photos and videos of food assembly and packaging at Safari in the course of its participation in the free meal program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. Montez calculated the number of meals displayed as packed and stacked on tables in the restaurant’s event center. If bananas were put on top of the packages, as they were in several photos, Said doubled the number calculated.

Said explained that Somalis and others came from all around to pick up free meals. He claimed to be serving the Little Mogadishu area of Cedar-Riverside by delivery. On cross, Joe Thompson pointed out several other Feeding Our Future “sites” located in Little Mogadishu. Said was unaware of them, but claimed they would not have been serving hot meals like Safari’s. However, no child ever set foot inside Safari during that period. The millions of meals claimed meals were distributed by pick-up or delivery. No problem.

I sit next to Star Tribune reporter Jeff Meitrodt in the press row of the courtroom. He seems to me an old-fashioned kind of reporter with a gimlet eye and without an axe to grind. I asked him what he made of all this. Jeff said he wanted to see photos of Safari’s kitchen. Cynic that he is, he doubts its capacity to cook the meals displayed in the photos and videos. In that light it’s hard to think about the photos without laughing. Cherchez la cuisine!

Safari claimed to be serving 5,000 and then 6,000 kids a day seven days a week month after month during Covid from April 2020 to January 20, 2022, when the FBI raids ended the Feeding Our Future fraud. In that brief period Said’s share of the proceeds amounted to more than $5,000,000, derived entirely from the federal child nutrition program. Before Safari’s participation in the program, by the way, Said took home $30,000 from the restaurant in his best year.

All that money — he earned it and was entitled to reap the benefits in the cars and property he purchased in cash. As a good Muslim, he preferred paying in cash to avoid the payment of interest. The same applied to the commercial properties he and his partners bought with the proceeds from the program.

My impression of Said’s direct examination was that it jumped summarily from subject to subject while the jury began to tune him out. I must have 30 more pages of notes on Said’s testimony and am omitting a lot, but want to conclude with this. Joe Thompson effectively cross-examined Said for a few hours in the afternoon. At the end of the day Said claimed that Safari spent $2,000,000 on food with Sysco. Suffice it to say that this expense is not evident in Safari’s records. “Don’t lie to this jury,” Thompson instructed Said.

The cynical Jeff Meitrodt pursued the point with Said’s attorney at the end of the day: “In a brief interview with the Star Tribune on Monday, Montez said he is not prepared to challenge prosecutors’ analysis that shows Safari spent just $317,000 on food in 2020 and 2021, despite obtaining more than $16 million through Feeding Our Future in reimbursements.” Jeff’s story on yesterday’s proceedings is here.

Thompson has more to go this morning. The jury seems to have soured on Said’s increasingly ludicrous explanations, denials, and evasions.

Judge Brasel hopes to submit the case to the jury this afternoon. She was scheduled to begin another big criminal trial yesterday. The jury showed up in court yesterday morning dressed in green. They seem to have bonded in the course of the trial. If I understood her correctly, Judge Brasel believes they are eager to deliberate. The end of the trial is in sight, but I don’t know if it will be this afternoon.