Free Republic

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants. His recorded statements flatly contradict his contemporaneous public statements and raise uncomfortable questions about the intersection between political fundraising and constituent services. American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal. As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence...

The Bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Reverend Jen Nagel, has released a statement, “For the Dignity of Our Neighbors,’ defending Somali immigrants and criticizing ICE amid the backdrop of the Minnesota Frand Scandal. The Minnesota fraud scandals, primarily the Feeding Our Future case, involve the theft of approximately $300 million (with broader losses estimated to be nearly $1 billion) from federal child nutrition and social service programs during the COVID-19 era through fake meal sites, shell companies, and fraudulent claims. Furthermore, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson recently speculated that fraud...

As the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to deploy 100 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minnesota, home to an estimated 87,000 people with Somali ties, Lutheran church leaders are pushing back against federal immigration enforcement actions with evangelism. Last Tuesday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said ICE agents are being deployed to the Twin Cities to specifically target the Somali community, which has faced allegations of rampant fraud involving the state’s benefit system after federal prosecutors charged dozens of individuals with stealing over $300 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program through Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota-based nonprofit....