A group of Republican state lawmakers from both the Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate have called on Gov. Tim Walz to resign. The announcement comes as Minnesota’s years-long fraud saga has become a major, national story.
Earlier this month, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said he suspects more than $9 billion spent on 14 state-run, Medicaid-funded programs could be fraudulent. Many of these state-run programs were designed to help vulnerable Minnesotans obtain housing, addition recovery services, adult daycare, autism services, and other benefits.
However, federal authorities are in the process of unraveling fraud schemes that reportedly bilked those programs for years. Many of the schemes typically follow a pattern of bogus companies billing the state for services that were never provided.
Fraud investigations in the Medicaid-funded programs follows the federal government’s ongoing prosecution of the $250 million Feeding Our Future schemes that stole from a federal child nutrition program.
To date, 90% of those who have been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in connection to Minnesota’s ongoing fraud saga are from the Somali community.
Minnesota’s fraud problem has become a major national story in recent months. Even more attention was brought to the widespread fraud this week after independent journalist Nick Shirley posted a video of him visiting Somali daycare centers that has received over 115 million impressions on X.
Now, five Republican legislators are calling on Walz to resign. The group includes Sens. Bill Lieske and Nathan Wesenberg, and State Reps. Marj Fogelman, Drew Roach, and Mike Wiener. A joint press release from the group said their call for Walz’s resignation is connected to Thompson’s warning about more than $9 billion in potential fraud.
“Minnesotans have been watching the fraud crisis get worse and worse for years,” said the Republican legislators. “It has gone on long enough. This is not about politics or stunts, and we do not make a call like this lightly. The office of the governor deserves respect, and we have tried to give Gov. Walz time to act.
“But leadership means doing the right thing even when it is difficult, which is why we are calling on Gov. Walz to resign. We are talking about billions of dollars in fraud that should have gone to vulnerable Minnesotans. The red flags were everywhere. Yet, year after year the fraud kept growing, and year after year, nothing changed.
“People in our districts raise this issue constantly. It is the number one issue we hear about. They want to know why nobody is being held accountable. They want to know when somebody is going to fix it. And they want to know why the governor isn’t resigning.”
In their press release, the group cited Article VIII, Section 6 of the Minnesota Constitution which says a governor can be recalled for “serious malfeasance or nonfeasance during the term of office in the performance of the duties of the office.”
The five Republicans, who said they are not initiating a recall effort, said the constitutional standard described in Article VIII, Section 6 supports their call for resignation. According to the Minnesota Constitution, a recall petition could only be issued if the Minnesota Supreme Court finds the petition legitimate and if enough signatures for the petition are collected.
“What we are seeing from the governor is what nonfeasance looks like,” said the group of Republican lawmakers. “When a governor fails to do what he is required to do, when he watches a crisis spiral out of control and does nothing to stop it, that is nonfeasance. The governor had a duty to oversee his administration and protect these programs. He failed. There needs to be consequences.
“For the good of the state, Gov. Walz should step aside. Minnesota needs accountability, a reset, and new leadership that can get us back on the right track,” added the group.
Alpha News contacted the governor’s office for this story but did not immediately hear back.
Earlier this year, the Walz administration shut down a housing assistance program called Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) after it determined the program had been pillaged by fraudsters. HSS is one of the 14 Medicaid-funded programs under scrutiny.
In recent months, the governor issued a 90-day payment pause for the 14 programs and initiated a third-party audit of the programs. Earlier this month, Walz hired a “Director of Program Integrity” and announced a partnership with an outside firm “to implement a statewide fraud prevention program.”
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