(NewsNation) — A member of the Minnesota House Fraud Committee says the Department of Homeland Security going door-to-door continuing to investigate the fraud in the state has been long overdue.
“This is something that a lot of us here in this state have been hoping for, pleading for and trying to make the case for a very long time,” Republican state Rep. Walter Hudson told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”
According to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, federal agents were on the ground talking to local business owners, just one day after FBI Director Kash Patel suggested his agency is putting more resources into investigating potential social-services fraud in Minnesota.
The Minnesota House Fraud Committee also posted Monday that last year it gave the DHS a list of providers that got more than a million dollars in taxpayer funds. Authorities are still calculating the cost of fraud in the state, where they say entire businesses were set up for the purposes of defrauding federally funded programs dedicated to things like child care, housing and autism support.
Federal sources told NewsNation that of the roughly 90 people recently charged in multiple fraud schemes around Minnesota, nearly all are Somali American. President Trump has also attacked Minneapolis’s large Somali American community in response, stating that he doesn’t want Somali immigrants in the U.S.
Asked why it took over a year to stop that taxpayer money from going to fake day cares or other facilities paid by American tax dollars, Hudson blamed the state’s leadership being under a Democratic stronghold.
“Unfortunately, here in the state of Minnesota, we have been under the reign of Minnesota Democrats for 20-plus years,” acknowledged Hudson. “There have been times where Republicans have had majorities in one chamber or the other legislatively.”
Tim Walz resigning would be ‘potentially counterintuitive’: State rep
Hudson has argued Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is to blame for the fraud controversy, as does much of Trump’s conservative base.
Calls for Walz’s resignation have grown louder recently; however, Hudson feels his resignation would be “potentially counterintuitive.”
“We’re going into an election year,” said Hudson. “He’s going to face consequences when it comes to November. The fact of the matter is, if he resigns, the Democrat playbook is going to be to pretend that, well, ‘That was that, we’ve got nothing else we need to worry about, the bad guy’s gone.’
“They’ll pile on him and act like he was the problem, when in point of fact, this is a systemic problem that runs throughout the entirety of state government and has been facilitated by Minnesota Democrats across the board,” added Hudson.