WASHINGTON — Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan donned a hijab to specific solidarity with Somalis in a neighborhood TV look amid federal and congressional investigations into fraudsters of their refugee neighborhood who bilked taxpayers out of as a lot as $9 billion.
“I’m extremely clear that the Somali neighborhood is a part of the material of the state of Minnesota,” Flanagan stated at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis alongside native officers in a video launched by Somali TV of Minnesota on Thursday.
“I’m right here buying at present and simply encourage people to point out up, assist our Somali companies, assist our immigrant neighbors, and I do know that issues are scary proper now,” added Flanagan, a Catholic, whereas sporting the Islamic head overlaying.
Home Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), additionally a Catholic, fired again in an announcement about Flanagan’s look that “anybody with widespread sense sees proper via this stunt.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey additionally held a information convention Tuesday denouncing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown within the Twin Cities — together with at Karmel, the place Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers reportedly detained 4 on Monday.
The US Treasury Division and a strong Home committee are at present probing Somali-linked organizations and different nonprofits within the state accused of defrauding taxpayers out of round half of the $18 billion in federal funding offered to Minnesota since 2018.
“The magnitude can’t be overstated,” prime Minnesota federal prosecutor Joe Thompson has stated. “What we see in Minnesota is just not a handful of dangerous actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”
The most important scheme convicted dozens of fraudsters from the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, who used greater than $250 million in ill-gotten positive aspects to splurge on luxurious vehicles and actual property — generally in nations as distant as Kenya and Turkey.
“The applications are set as much as transfer the cash to individuals,” Walz informed The New York Occasions in November. “The applications are set as much as enhance individuals’s lives, and in lots of instances, the criminals discover the loopholes.”
Staff who claimed to work on the Minnesota Division of Human Providers, one of many two state companies that distributed the funds, slammed the Democratic the governor the next month for having been “100% answerable for huge fraud.”
Walz beforehand tried responsible a Minnesota decide for forcing some funds to Feeding Our Future to renew in 2021 — earlier than incomes a stern rebuke.
That very same yr, he additionally honored a fraudster at a separate nonprofit linked to the sprawling scheme with an “Excellent Refugee Award.”
After in depth media protection this yr, Walz launched an anti-fraud process power in response, telling The Occasions: “The message right here in Minnesota is when you commit a criminal offense, when you commit fraud in opposition to public {dollars}, you’re going to go to jail.”
The Home Oversight Committee demanded information from Walz, Minnesota Legal professional Normal Keith Ellison and different state officers and nonprofits by Dec. 17 as a part of Chairman James Comer’s probe of the fraudulent scheme.
“Minnesota Governor Walz and Legal professional Normal Keith Ellison have offered preliminary productions to the Oversight Committee relating to the large fraud that occurred beneath their watch, however the response is anemic,” Comer stated. “Whereas the Governor’s workplace claims it’ll proceed producing paperwork, we intend to carry them to that promise. Any failure to completely cooperate with our investigation into the large theft of taxpayer {dollars} will carry penalties.”
At one level in her Karmel Mall look, Flanagan gestured to the girl standing to her rapid left, Nimco Ahmed, the Somali-American state director of the Democratic Farmer Labor Social gathering in Minnesota, calling her a pal of 25 years.
Ahmed has been quoted in Time journal and Minnesota Public Radio articles as a “pal” and acquaintance of Somali males who returned to their native nation within the 2010s to hitch al-Shabaab — a terror group that later acquired thousands and thousands of the state’s welfare {dollars} as a result of fraud scheme.
In 2011, Ahmed informed Minnesota Public Radio Information in regards to the “younger males leaving right here, committing suicide bombings, killing harmless individuals, they usually suppose they’re doing the appropriate factor.”
“That’s the factor that’s unbelievable to me. So what’s not attainable anymore?” she requested.
Ahmed additionally informed Time two years later: “We really feel doubly victimized, to lose our kids and brothers to terrorism and to be painted as terrorists ourselves.”
Flanagan is certainly one of three declared candidates — together with Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and political outsider Billy Nord — going through off for the 2026 Senate Democratic major nomination within the state.
It’s not the primary time she’s chosen to put on clothes that sparked controversy, having placed on a “Shield Trans Children” shirt with a knife on it in March 2023 information convention on the state Capitol.
“That is life-affirming and life-saving well being care,” Flanagan stated. “When our kids inform us who they’re, it’s our job as grown-ups to hear and to consider them.”
Movies of the lieutenant governor and Senate hopeful sporting the black T-shirt went viral in August after a transgender gunman shot up a Catholic parochial college in Minneapolis, killing two youngsters and injuring 18 others earlier than taking his life.
“My coronary heart goes out to all these affected by the terrifying act of violence at Annunciation Catholic college this morning,” Flanagan stated in an announcement following the capturing. “I’m grateful to the regulation enforcement who responded.”
Emmer claimed each Flanagan and Craig had been “battling it out in an try and win over the far-left radicals within the Twin Cites.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) created the emptiness by selecting to not run for re-election.
Reps for Flanagan didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
