Feeding Our Fraud: ?s for Tim Walz

There is of course a political angle to the massive Feeding Our Future fraud. How to get at it? I emailed questions to Attorney General Keith Ellison and Governor Tim Walz on March 3. I wrote Walz at the email address I found for his press team: “I am covering the Feeding Our Future trials in federal court for the Power Line site. I am working on a story about the case for a national audience. If Governor Walz would grant me an interview, I would ask the questions below and others that would come up. This is to ask for an interview. Short of that, the written questions below are for Governor Walz with a request for written response by the end of business March 5.” Here are the questions I sent to Walz.

)You are quoted saying with respect to the colossal fraud in this case that “we caught it very early.” What are you referring to? Who caught it? When was that? When were you first briefed on it? What did you do about it?

As I understand the testimony in the case, Emily Honer, an administrator at the Minnesota Department of Education, called the FBI to report her suspicions of fraud in April 2021. On what date did that occur?

Did you ever seek to have the Department of Education, the Attorney General’s office, or local law enforcement authorities in investigate the case? Please describe.

Anyone who visited the sites in issue would see that they were claiming to serve meals vastly in excess of reality and that there was no way they could have done what they claimed to be doing. Sites that claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day had little or no activity. Did you ever seek to have payments to Feeding Our Future and the numerous sites it was sponsoring stopped before $250 million had gone out the door?

Ms. Honer testified that she called the FBI to report suspected fraud in April 2021. Did you understand that MDE continued to pay out millions of dollars a month to Feeding Our Future and the sites from April 2021 until January 2022? Were you helpless to do anything about it?

Did you think you were hands were tied as millions of dollars continued to be paid to the thieves allegedly serving thousands of meals a day? Did you ask anyone for advice on that score?

Why didn’t you instruct the MDE to stop payments and prepare a defense against the claims Feeding Our Future would bring for nonpayment?

Did you think the investigation and prosecution of this case was beyond the capacity of state and local authorities?

Was the suspected fraud ever reported to the Office of Legislative Auditor or other state agency? If not, why not.

What did you think of Feeding Our Future’s allegations of racism with respect to MDE’s administration of the program in the spring of 2021?

I received this automated response (link in original):

Thank you for contacting the Office of Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. This mailbox is not regularly monitored. If you would like to contact our office, please visit the Governor’s Office contact page – Contact / Office of Governor Tim Walz and Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan (mn.gov). Thank you again.

I copied the questions above and submitted them in the public portal at the link on March 3. This past Friday I received the email depicted in the screenshot below (click to enlarge). It is dated March 14 and directs me to “reach our press team” at yet another email address. At the upper left of the message it includes a formal addressee block with my full name and home address that I did not include in my original email and have omitted below:

I resubmitted my questions with a few more I had added in the interim with this preface: “I emailed these questions to you on March 3 with a request for response by the close of business March 5. I am copying them in below. Your March 14 message that I should email you at this address suggests you received my initial email. If you intend to respond to these questions, please do so by the close of business on March 17.”

Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. I will report any response received from the Walz press team verbatim. As they say, however, I’m not holding my breath.