During Monday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Hannity,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, pledged “real accountability” on allegations of fraud committed in Minnesota with federal government resources.
HANNITY: All right. Chairman, where are you going with this?
COMER: Well, I’m really excited, Sean. We put a lot of time into this report. I want to brag on the committee and the committee staff, but the heroes of this report are the whistleblowers in Minnesota. We had nine whistleblowers who are career government employees in Minnesota who did the right thing.
They saw fraud and they did exactly what they were supposed to do when they caught fraud. They reported it to their superiors. They reported it to Attorney General Keith Ellison and Governor Tim Walz. Time after time, the governor and attorney general both turned a blind eye.
When the whistleblowers continued to blow the whistle, then Governor Walz started retaliating against the whistleblowers. So, we have two crimes here. We have a crime of negligence with our tax dollars. And secondly, we have a crime of retaliating against whistleblowers.
So, we sent a letter and the report to Vice President Vance, who’s done a tremendous job with his fraud task force in Minnesota, and he referred it today to the Department of Justice. So, I think we’re going to see real accountability here. We’ve already seen three dozen people arrested in Minnesota for being a part of this fraud.
And, Sean, the only way you’re ever going to stop public officials like Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison from doing anything about fraud is you’ve got to hold them accountable. And that’s what our committee did along with the help of Vice President Vance. And now it’s in the Department of Justice’s hands.
And the evidence is there because of the whistleblowers and all the depositions and interviews we did with them, that Governor Walz did turn a blind eye and retaliated against whistleblowers.
HANNITY: Your committee found Minnesota estimated lost $300 million in stolen federal nutrition funds intended for the hungry, hungry children, during the COVID-19 pandemic. As much as $9 billion in Medicare billing that may have been fraudulent.
Nine billion dollars in one state, Congressman? Seriously?
COMER: That’s substantial. I mean, that’s half the general fund budget for the entire state of Kentucky. And this was just on welfare programs in Minnesota.
And again, the — people ask, well, how could this — how could they get away with this? Well, they didn’t. All the checks were in place. The government employees caught the fraud, but yet the governor and the attorney general didn’t want to do anything, Sean, for political reasons.
They didn’t want to offend that massive Somali voting bloc they have in Minnesota. That is a big reason why Minnesota continues to stay blue in the presidential race, and that’s why they have a Democrat governor and a Democrat attorney general because of that voting base.
So, anytime someone — a whistleblower or someone in Congress would say something about the fraud, they would say, “Oh, that’s racist. That’s racist.” Or the Democrats would do their normal business model and say, “Oh, the Republicans are wanting to cut off Medicaid.”
My governor in Kentucky tweeted that today. He picked the bad day to defend Minnesota.
But at the — at the end of the day, the people of America are sick and tired of sending their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington and then Washington sending that money to those states and the states just disregarding the taxpayers and allowing the fraud to continue.
I’m confident something’s going to be done. I appreciate Vice President Vance.
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