‘Incompetence or dereliction’: Minnesota lawmaker rips Tim Walz as state fraud losses mount

The House Oversight Committee is ramping up its probe into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Republican lawmakers say the scale of the state’s exploding fraud schemes draw questions about whether top officials should have been able to detect and stop them ahead of time. 

To Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., the fraud schemes coming from his state are so numerous and so costly that he believes they represent either “incompetence or dereliction of duty.”

“Well, with the magnitude of the fraud, I find it really almost impossible that the governor or his staff and the attorney general didn’t know,” Stauber said. “And the Minnesota taxpayers are paying for it.”

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Pete Stauber, R-Minn., said the fraud schemes coming from his state represent either “incompetence or dereliction of duty” from the governor’s office. (John McCreary/NHLI via Getty Images)

Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital he had a high level of confidence that the committee would find out whether the governor’s office should have been aware of the mountain of fraud and whether the state’s climbing losses could have been prevented, citing whistleblowers’ testimony he hopes to confirm.

“We want to know how much fraud. Is it still ongoing? Were people aware [and] turned a blind eye? That’s pretty much the purpose of our investigation,” Comer said on Friday.

The House Oversight Committee launched its investigation earlier this month after recent reports revealed that the state had been hemorrhaging funds through fraud schemes in its social benefit programs. 

The most prominent example, the Feeding Our Future scheme, resulted in a $250 million loss when fraudsters received payments from the state for services that went unfulfilled, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

But the documented problems stretch well beyond the one example.

Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., walks near the Minnesota state capitol in St. Paul, Oct. 7, 2025.  (Abbie Parr/AP Photo)

Notably, the state had to shutter its housing assistance program after 77 housing providers were discontinued due to “credible allegations of fraud” uncovered by the FBI in 2025. Similarly, the state’s Medicaid costs covering autism-related services have grown exponentially. According to the Minnesota Reformer, payments for the state’s autism program went from $6 million to over $190 million since 2018.

Stauber said the widespread fraud had climbed into the “billions.” It remains unclear, however, how much money the state has lost to fraud in recent years.

Although the schemes all look slightly different, Comer said they have one underlying question: Was Walz aware? 

“It’s going to be a pretty comprehensive investigation,” Comer said of efforts to answer that question. “We’ve gotten off to a pretty good start because we have some whistleblowers.” 

Comer said the whistleblowers told the committee that members inside the governor’s office had been made aware of the fraud but that it had largely gone unheeded.

“They’re alleging that they made the governor and the attorney general aware a long time ago, and they did nothing about it. And it’s been an ongoing problem.”  

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Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital he had a high level of confidence that the committee would find out whether the governor’s office should have been aware of the mountain of fraud and whether the state’s climbing losses could have been prevented. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

He said the committee would send investigators to Minnesota in the near future but didn’t give a timeline for how long he expected the investigation to take. Comer also declined to say exactly how many whistleblowers had spoken with the committee so far.

“Multiple,” Comer said. 

When asked about the committee’s investigation and whether Walz’s office would comply with committee requests, the governor’s office said yes.

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“We look forward to working together. While the governor has been working to ensure fraudsters go to prison, the president has been letting them out,” Walz’s office said.