The Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee issued subpoenas to Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and others on Wednesday demanding documents and communications regarding a Minnesota nonprofit that federal prosecutors say ripped off $250 million in COVID-19 funds.
The scandal has played out in federal courtrooms and in Minnesota headlines in the two years since Attorney General Merrick Garland called it “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme” ever prosecuted when he announced initial charges against 47 people in September 2022, but it’s getting renewed attention with Walz now on the Democratic presidential ticket.
The subpoenas issued Wednesday are the latest effort by House Republicans using their investigative authority to probe the political foes of former President Donald Trump, including Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and prosecutors who have charged Trump with crimes. Since Walz was named the Democratic vice presidential candidate, House Republicans have sent letters to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and FBI Director Christopher Wray questioning Walz’s history of visiting and working in China.
“You are well aware of the multi-million-dollar fraud that has occurred under your tenure as Governor,”North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, the committee chair, wrote in a letter to Walz. “The documents we have received to date indicate the actions taken by you and other executive officers were insufficient to address the massive fraud.”
According to federal prosecutors, the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future siphoned around $250 million fraudulently from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Child Nutrition Program, which provides free meals to children and was dramatically expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. The USDA distributes funds through the program to state governments who then work with local organizations to get meals to children.
Feeding Our Future employees, led by executive director Aimee Block, recruited people in Minnesota to establish fake meal providers across the state and claim to feed thousands of children a day “within just days or weeks of being formed,” prosecutors alleged. The children apparently being fed never existed and the funds were instead used to buy luxury vehicles, fund international travel, and purchase real estate in Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Kenya and Turkey.
A total of 70 people have been charged in the case since the first indictments came down in 2022, with 18 pleading guilty, five found guilty at trial, two acquitted, one dead and another who fled the country, according to Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper. During the first trial of the investigation, a woman attempted to bribe a juror with $120,000 in cash. Five people were indicted in June for the bribery scheme, including three of the defendants on trial.
The Harris campaign and the USDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"This was an appalling abuse of a federal COVID-era program. The state department of education worked diligently to stop the fraud and we’re grateful to the FBI for working with the department of education to arrest and charge the individuals involved," a spokeswoman for Walz's office in Minnesota said in a statement.
Walz has defended his administration in the past while conceding “we can always do better” in June after a nonpartisan office audited Minnesota’s education department. The audit found the department “failed to act on warning signs” and “was ill-prepared to respond” to the fraud, creating opportunities for the scammers.
At the time, prior to Biden dropping out and Harris selecting Walz as her running mate, Walz said the report was a “fair critique,” but that the chaos of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was important context to the situation.
“We certainly take responsibility for that,” Walz said, according to the Star Tribune, but that “this wasn’t malfeasance” on the part of the state government.
“There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should’ve,” he added, pointing out state education department leadership had changed in the years since.
The day before the audit’s release in June, Foxx and other House Republicans — including Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn. — requested additional information on the state’s oversight of Feeding our Future from Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Willie Jett, who was named to the role in 2023. In another letter to Jett on Wednesday, Foxx writes her committee received documents on June 25 and Aug. 9, but that they “do not explain how your agency and the USDA failed to identify what has been described as the largest pandemic fraud in the nation” and requested scores more documents.
Jett and the Minnesota Department of Education did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
Some Democrats took umbrage with Foxx’s subpoenas on Wednesday, with Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz writing on social media that Republicans have “no credibility” when they talk about the “weaponization of government.”
“Blatant use of official resources for a campaign,” wrote Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat, on social media. “Pretty disgusting!”