In December 2021, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) met with multiple individuals linked to a $250 million COVID-19 fraud scheme that centered on stealing taxpayer funds intended to feed hungry children. After the meeting, he and his son Jeremiah, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, received campaign donations from multiple individuals connected to the fraud scheme.

Audio from the meeting, which came up during a recent court hearing, has prompted questions about Ellison's links to the fraudsters, and in turn, an effort on his part to cure the narrative.

Background

The Department of Justice announced criminal charges in September 2022 against dozens of individuals linked to a $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland indicated at the time that it was the "largest pandemic relief scheme charged to date."

The New York Post noted that of the 70 people charged in connection to the scheme, the Justice Department has so far secured 44 convictions or guilty pleas. Two of the fraudsters, Aimee Bock and Salim Said, were convicted by a federal jury last month.

During the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped some of the standard requirements for participation in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. For-profit restaurants could now participate in the program, and off-site food distribution to kids outside of educational programs was permitted.

Bock, Said, and scores of other bad actors in Minnesota rushed to exploit the loosened rules.

According to the Justice Department, Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit organization that was already a sponsor participating in the nutrition program, opened 250 program sites throughout the state of Minnesota to "receive and launder the proceeds of their fraudulent scheme."

The nonprofit, run by Bock, went from disbursing roughly $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021.

'I'm not here because I think it's gonna help my re-election.'

Feeding Our Future employees recruited various individuals and entities to open sites under the program that falsely claimed to be serving meals to thousands of kids daily.

Bock and Said, then-owner of Safari Restaurant, apparently created fake meal counts on the basis of fake attendance rosters replete with the names and ages of kids who were supposedly fed at taxpayers' expense.

The fraudsters used the proceeds of their scam to buy luxury vehicles, fund international travel, and buy real estate. The fraudsters not only bought property in Minnesota, Ohio, and Kentucky but in Kenya and Turkey, as well.

The meeting

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Ellison met with people connected to the Feeding Our Future case on Dec. 11, 2021. Audio of the meeting, which took place one month before the FBI raided the nonprofit and the fraud case was publicized, was caught on tape.

The group that met with Ellison, which partly consisted of individuals under FBI investigation, reportedly complain in the recording published by the Center of the American Experiment that they were being targeted by state agencies and that this unwanted attention was fueled in part by racial animus.

During the meeting, the group vowed to throw its financial and political weight behind Ellison, who was then running for re-election, if he would — in the words of Abshir Omar, a Feeding Our Future consultant — be a "true and steadfast partner to fight for basic justice."

Ellison expressed sympathy for the group — at that point already embroiled in litigation with the state — and indicated he would take their concerns to his staff, state agencies, and potentially the governor, reported the Tribune.

On the tape, Ellison can apparently be heard telling the group, "I'm not here because I think it's gonna help my re-election."

In the days that followed, individuals who attended the meeting, along with their family members and others connected to the Feeding Our Future case, dumped over $20,000 into the campaigns of Ellison and his son Jeremiah.

'I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.'

Among the many donors linked to the case who made maximum donations to Jeremiah Ellison were:

• Salim Said, an individual reportedly present at the meeting who ran the fraud scheme with Bock;
• Ikram Mohamed, a Feeding Our Future consultant present at the meeting facing multiple criminal charges in the case;
• Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, another defendant accused of fraudulently receiving and laundering over $1.1 million in nutrition program funds who also donated $2,500 to Keith Ellison's campaign;
• Abdinasir Mahamed Abshir, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud;
• Abdulkadir Nur Salah, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud;
• Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for defrauding the U.S. government of $46 million; and
• Khalid Omar, director of the Dar Al-Farooq mosque, one of the sites where fraudsters falsely claimed to have distributed 18.8 million meals.

Brian Evans, a spokesman for the Democratic AG, told the Tribune, "Nothing improper happened whatsoever."

Republican lawmakers don't appear entirely convinced of the innocence act.

Minnesota House Republican Floor Leader Rep. Harry Niska stated earlier this month, "It's disturbing to learn that Attorney General Ellison met with and offered verbal support to criminal defendants at the heart of the largest pandemic fraud scam in the country. He was even offered campaign contributions in this meeting, which he later accepted."

"Earlier this session, Democrats voted to block legislation that would give taxpayers more transparency into the operations of the AG's office," continued Niska. "This incident underscores the need for that legislation and raises questions about why Democrats blocked it in the first place."

"Minnesotans just heard their attorney general offering support to individuals who were orchestrating the largest pandemic-related fraud scheme in the nation," said state Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee. "This demands additional scrutiny, as (the) attorney general's duty is to defend state agencies and provide rigorous oversight of Minnesota businesses and charities."

Additional scrutiny might provide answers to the questions the Tribune raised in a 2022 report about Ellison's failure to flush out the fraudulent activity sooner. The report noted:

If Ellison's office had used its investigative power to pull bank records, it could have found that the alleged conspirators paid at least $524,579 in bribes and laundered $3.2 million in program funds between July 2020 and March 2021, prior to the FBI's involvement.

The narrative curation

In an op-ed Monday, Ellison insisted that his meeting with suspected fraudsters ahead of an FBI raid "was routine" and that he "made no promises" when they asked for help.

The Democratic AG did his best to downplay the meeting, writing, "If you read nothing else in this piece, here's what you need to know: I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn't know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them."

Ellison curiously omitted any mention of the campaign donations that poured in after the meeting. He alternatively suggested that when the "scammers" suggested that they would contribute to his campaign if he helped them, he "shut that down immediately."

The op-ed is carefully worded.

For instance, Ellison does not claim that the fraud scandal had not taken shape until after his meeting but rather that it had not taken "shape in earnest" until the following month. He also does not assert that the FBI did not share anything about their investigation prior to January 2022 but that it wasn't until January that the FBI "shared with my staff attorneys anything about the size of their investigation or the individuals they were targeting."

This carefully chosen language conveys that he went into the meeting blind about the nature of those in the room with him — even though his office stated in September 2022: "Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his office have been deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable."

"As for the meeting — if I had had any way of knowing beforehand who those people were and what they'd done, I never would have agreed to it," wrote Ellison. "But I'm not going to stop meeting with folks in good faith because a few bad people tried — and failed — to run their scheme on me."

Evans, Ellison's spokesman, suggested to the New York Post that the FBI was partly responsible for the Democratic AG meeting with the fraudsters.

"The FBI shared almost no information with other state officials about its investigation, including the targets of the investigation," said Evans.

The spokesman noted further that "the campaign has no intention of keeping contributions from anyone indicted in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme."

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