The Trump administration is looking into whether Minnesota tax money found its way to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday.
Bessent wrote on X that the Treasury is “investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.”
The Treasury secretary shared a Nov. 19 report in the conservative publication City Journal that alleged millions of dollars from Minnesota state welfare programs had “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab,” citing law enforcement sources. Several Minnesota Republicans, including Rep. Tom Emmer, pushed federal prosecutors to look into the allegations.
Walz’s office pointed CBS News to remarks last week in which the governor said he welcomes an investigation into where defrauded welfare money went and would work with investigators.
Minnesota has been racked by allegations of large-scale fraud in the state’s public assistance programs. Dozens of people have been charged in a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future and its partners, which federal prosecutors say stole federal nutrition aid by falsely claiming to help distribute meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials have also brought fraud charges involving housing aid and autism programs in the state.
Many of the defendants in these alleged fraud schemes are members of Minnesota’s large Somali community, a Somali American former investigator in the Minnesota attorney general’s office wrote in an opinion piece last year. The former investigator, Kayseh Magan, added that community members are also frequently victims of the schemes.
President Trump has repeatedly lashed out against Somali immigrants in Minnesota, claiming in a post last month that the state has become a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” and announcing an end to temporary deportation protections for Somali people in the midwestern state. Last week, the president alleged, without evidence, that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state.”
Walz and other Minnesota Democrats have defended the state’s Somali community. The governor told reporters last month, in response to the claims about al Shabaab: “Do not paint an entire group of people with that same brush, demonizing them, putting them at risk, when there is no proof of that.”
Claims that state money could be flowing to al Shabaab and other terror groups have circulated for years in Minnesota. A 2019 report by the state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said it was “unable to substantiate” allegations that Child Care Assistance Program funding is going to terrorist groups, though the organization didn’t rule it out, saying it’s “possible” that state funds may have been sent overseas and eventually found its way to terrorists.
Andy Lugar, a Biden- and Obama-era U.S. attorney for Minnesota, told The Minnesota Star Tribune last month that those charged in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme “were looking to get rich, not fund overseas terrorism.”