Gov. Tim Walz, who has already dropped his bid for a third term due to the massive fraud scandal in Minnesota, has faced mounting pressure to resign or be removed from office.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) has been calling on Walz to resign, and has predicted the situation won’t end well for him.
On the Republican Study Committee’s Right to the Point podcast, Emmer and fellow Minnesota GOP Reps. Brad Finstad and Michelle Fischbach argued that state leadership either enabled or ignored pervasive fraud tied to programs such as Feeding Our Future, as well as daycare and healthcare systems, much of it involving members of the Somali community.
"If you come to this country and you defraud Americans and Minnesotans because they're generous and you refuse to assimilate, you should get the hell out of here, and you should go home,” Emmer said. “I’m not going to be Minnesota Nice. I'm going to be Minnesota real. Tim Walz should resign, and if he doesn't resign, he's probably going to leave the office in cuffs."
Emmer cited an estimate from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson that total fraud could reach $9 billion, though some estimates suggest it’s even higher. He also credited President Donald Trump and independent journalist Nick Shirley with finally forcing the scandal into the spotlight, after years of the Walz administration ignoring it.
“It is not racist to call out criminal activity,” Emmer explained. “It is not xenophobic to identify the group of people who are involved, and in this case, 90% of the people who have been charged in the largest pandemic fraud case in the country, the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, are from the Somali community.”
According to a new report, Minnesota Republicans are drafting articles of impeachment against Walz over his handling of a fraud scandal that may have cost taxpayers billions, and they may be filed as soon as Tuesday.
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State Rep. Ben Davis confirmed to The Blaze that impeachment articles are being drafted and prepared for public release. "We are going public with them. I believe this week, possibly even tomorrow," Davis said. The Republican legislator and pastor pointed to months of GOP warnings that Walz ignored about the massive fraud scheme targeting pandemic-era food programs and other social services in Minnesota's Somali community.
Davis hammered Walz for refusing to tighten oversight despite direct appeals from Republican lawmakers. "Fraud is happening. Fraud is going on. You need to put tighter levers on this. And he's done just the opposite," Davis said.
Federal prosecutors have already charged multiple people in connection with schemes that bilked more than $240 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program through the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Additional charges have been filed against six individuals for defrauding autism services and housing stabilization programs.
Gov. Walz has been extremely defiant in the wake of this scandal. He even framed his decision to drop out of the race as a selfless act that would allow him to focus on combating the fraud.
"Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can't spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences," he claimed. "So I've decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work."
Impeachment would require a majority in the state House to proceed, followed by a two-thirds vote in the state Senate to convict. Republicans hold a two-seat majority in the Minnesota House, but the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party has a one-seat majority in the Senate.
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