Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz refused to appear before a state legislative committee investigating billions of dollars in taxpayer fraud on Tuesday, even though he was in the same building preparing to deliver his final State of the State address, Fox News Digital reported.
State Rep. Kristin Robbins, the Republican chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, said her panel reached out on March 9 asking Walz to testify at one of several hearings scheduled that week. The governor’s team waited until 6 p.m. Monday, the night before the hearing, to inform the committee he would not attend.
Then Walz showed up at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul anyway, for other business. Robbins posted on X: “He was in the building!”
Robbins told Fox News Digital she had expected Walz to appear voluntarily. She drew a sharp contrast with his March 4 testimony before the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee in Washington, D.C., where he appeared only because he was under subpoena.
“The only reason he testified in D.C. is because he was under subpoena. And, you know, he doesn’t have to come to our committee. I expected him to. I really did, because Minnesotans are owed an explanation of how billions of our tax dollars could be stolen on his watch.”
No subpoena power forced the issue in St. Paul. And Walz chose to stay away. Fox News Digital reached out to the governor’s office for comment but did not report receiving a response.
Robbins did not mince words about what the absence said about the governor’s posture toward accountability.
“I think he just feels above it all and doesn’t need to answer to the people of Minnesota.”
She added that she “cannot defend his arrogance that he would not come and answer questions for the historic, unprecedented level of fraud in our state and in the country.”
The pattern of avoidance extends beyond Walz. Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, who has faced her own scrutiny from House Republicans, also failed to appear before the same committee earlier this month. Robbins had sent Omar a letter demanding answers to a variety of questions by May 5.
As of Tuesday, Robbins said the committee had not heard back from Omar’s office.
“They do have till May 5, so I’m hoping they will. But, you know, they ghosted us all the way up to the hearing, so I don’t know if they will respond.”
Walz’s no-show came on the same day federal authorities executed raids across Minneapolis. Newsmax reported that agents targeted nearly two dozen facilities, including daycare centers and autism service providers suspected of defrauding public assistance programs. The federal government said it directed and orchestrated the operations.
Rather than sit for questions about the fraud that prompted those raids, Walz took the stage that evening for his State of the State address. He touted his administration’s record on fighting fraud, and appeared to take credit for the very federal actions carried out hours earlier.
“We’ve created additional checks and balances. We’ve brought on more investigators, more auditors, more law enforcement agencies, as well as an outside firm to take a look at high-risk programs. People who have ripped us off are getting caught and they are going to jail, just like today.”
FBI Director Kash Patel was among those who disputed Walz’s characterization, pushing back on the suggestion that state agencies had flagged the irregularities the feds acted on.
Robbins watched the speech and was unimpressed. She called it “ridiculous.”
“He somewhat said, ‘Oh the buck stops with me,’ but then he immediately pivoted to blame everyone else.”
Walz also claimed during the address that red states have more fraud than blue states and suggested the legislature needed to do more to adopt his proposal to fight fraud. Robbins dismissed the deflection flatly: “He can keep gaslighting people but nobody buys it anymore.”
The fraud crisis engulfing Minnesota did not arrive overnight. National Review reported that congressional testimony and a House Oversight Committee report found Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were warned about widespread fraud in Minnesota social-services programs as early as 2019 and 2020, and did not act. A new committee report concluded that top state officials failed to respond to mounting warnings while billions of dollars were allegedly stolen.
The most prominent case, the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, led to the indictment of 79 people since 2022 in connection with $250 million in stolen federal nutrition funds, as the New York Post detailed. At the March 4 House Oversight hearing in Washington, Rep. Jim Jordan pressed Walz on why Minnesota resumed payments to Feeding Our Future after briefly halting them in April 2021.
Jordan accused Walz of falsely blaming a court for requiring the payments to restart, citing a Minnesota court system statement that contradicted the governor’s claim. “Why didn’t you tell the truth about why you restarted the payments?” Jordan asked.
The scope of the fraud extends well beyond Feeding Our Future. Federal prosecutors have now indicted more than 90 fraudsters and convicted more than 60 in Minnesota’s Somali fraud schemes, the Washington Free Beacon reported. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson estimated that Medicaid fraud in the state could exceed $9 billion. Walz responded by calling Thompson’s estimate “defamation” and suggesting the prosecutor “would have been let go by any other administration.”
Rather than cooperating with the federal investigation, Walz framed it as a partisan attack: “We are under assault like no other time in our state’s history because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the well-being of Minnesotans.”
The scale of benefit fraud draining taxpayer dollars across the country is staggering, but Minnesota stands out for the sheer volume of documented theft and the length of time officials allegedly knew about it before acting.
Walz has proposed an $54 million, 18-part anti-fraud package that his administration says will prevent future theft. But lawmakers on the oversight committee have questioned whether the plan would actually work. The Washington Examiner reported that DHS Commissioner Shireen Gandhi, who previously oversaw financial operations at the agency when organized scam rings stole millions in Medicaid funds, defended the proposal at a hearing.
Republican lawmakers raised a specific concern: the plan’s requirement that fraud allegations be “verified” before agencies can act could actually slow down enforcement. Robbins herself told the committee, “I agree with your intent, but my concern is that ‘verified’ is going to hamstring us.” State Rep. Isaac Schultz put it more bluntly: “There are convicted fraudsters who are currently receiving money from the state government. We still lack the ability to shut off the money.”
A federal judge has already upheld the Trump administration’s Medicaid funding hold on Minnesota as part of the broader fraud fight, a measure Walz has opposed but that underscores the depth of federal concern about how the state handles public money.
Robbins framed the governor’s refusal to testify as something larger than a scheduling conflict. She noted that Walz was physically present at the Capitol that afternoon, close enough to walk down the hall, yet chose not to face the committee that represents the taxpayers whose money was stolen.
“This isn’t just because we’re the legislature, it’s because we are representing the taxpayers who deserve answers from their public officials. And the fact that they don’t deign to come and answer questions on the record and just think that they can be above it all, it’s really an affront to Minnesotans.”
Walz, who has announced he will not seek re-election, dropped his gubernatorial reelection bid amid the fraud backlash. Robbins is currently running for governor herself. But the political dynamics do not change the underlying facts: billions in taxpayer funds allegedly stolen, years of warnings allegedly ignored, and a governor who will deliver a speech about fighting fraud but will not sit for questions about it.
The committee invited him. He declined. He was in the building. He gave a speech instead.
That tells Minnesota taxpayers everything they need to know about where accountability ranks on Tim Walz’s priority list.
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