While fraud rings in Minnesota's Somali community have been under federal investigation for years, it was investigative journalist and BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo’s reporting that brought the billion-dollar scandals to national attention. Back in November 2025, Rufo published a report titled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer,” in which he and co-author Ryan Thorpe alleged that billions of taxpayer funds were being stolen through schemes in Minneapolis’ Somali community and that millions of those funds were being funneled to the Al-Shabaab terror group in Somalia.
Rufo's reporting sparked massive federal action, including revoking Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, surging Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, freezing child-care funds, and ramping up prosecutions. Most notably, it led Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to visit Minnesota in January 2026 and launch major FinCEN probes into hawala businesses, IRS audits, and enhanced transfer reporting.
In this exclusive BlazeTV interview with Rufo, Bessent shares what his team’s investigations have revealed about Minnesota’s Somali fraud operations and what steps the Treasury is taking to ensure it stops.
Bessent says his team’s investigations confirmed that the fraud schemes were “bigger than anyone thought” and that money — either excess government-issued funds or stolen funds — are indeed being sent illegally out of the country.
One positive result of the investigations into Minnesota’s fraud rings, however, is that they will provide a “model” for future investigations in the other 49 states.
“Just because of the population sizes — California, Illinois, New York — that what's going on [in Minnesota] is a microcosm of what's going on there. And it's like someone on the panel said today: Benefits have been turned into businesses. It is a cottage industry of teaching people how to form multiple LLCs, how to game the system, how to move money around,” says Bessent, pledging to “follow the money” and explore “recoveries” for cheated Americans.
Rufo calls these predominantly Somali-orchestrated fraud rings Minnesota’s “open secret.” Fraudsters were successful largely because they knew that the cultural standard of “Minnesota nice” and politicians’ “fear of being called racist” would result in the turning of blind eyes everywhere.
“What do you think the right attitude should be as you look at these frauds moving forward?” he asks.
“Clearly the governor's office does not want to do investigations. So we just want the facts. We want to see where they lead, and we want to put the bad guys in jail,” says Bessent.
Further Minnesota’s soft-on-crime policies that “incentivize” criminality need to be addressed. “You could steal hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, and under the Minnesota laws, you might not even get jail time. You might get a series of paroles,” Bessent adds.
“We have the ability to bring in IRS enforcement, and they don't monkey around. So the incentive is going to be to stop this.”
Rufo then posed the question that conservatives nationwide are eagerly awaiting an answer to: Will we finally see any big names face justice?
“From [Gov. Tim Walz] on down appears to be at a minimum to have turned a blind eye. There are rumors circulating around this building right now that in fact some have been complicit in these schemes. Is that something your office is looking into?” he asks.
“That's part of following the money. There are evidently some disturbing tapes of AG Ellison in meetings with people who donated to him calling for political favors to stop the investigations. So we'll see,” says Bessent.
“And Chris, I can guarantee you when the bear trap snaps, we're going to get these folks.”
To hear the rest of Rufo’s exclusive interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, watch the video above.
To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent revealed on Thursday that the Trump administration is clamping down on extra-national remittances by individuals exploiting public assistance.
The announcement, which comes on the heels of a series of damning revelations about fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota, could prove impactful for the crime-ridden Islamic nation of Somalia.
After all, members of the Somali diaspora sent $2.12 billion in remittances home in 2024 alone. The loss of the American portion of this funding stream would not go unnoticed for a failed nation with a GDP in the neighborhood of $12 billion.
'Our generosity has been taken advantage of.'
Bessent, who is also the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, told Fox News' Laura Ingraham, "We are here to follow the money because that's what Treasury does."
"We did it with the mafia, we have done it with the cartels, and now we are going to do it with these Somali fraudsters," continued Bessent. "Treasury has something called FinCEN, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and we are coming in."
Bessent indicated that the agency is launching four investigations into money-service businesses "that we believe may have wired money out of the country — a lot of the ill-gotten, stolen money — over to the Middle East, over to Somalia. We'll see where that's going."
As part of the crackdown, Bessent indicated that FinCEN will be issuing a Geographic Targeting Order, an order that imposes new identification and record-keeping requirements pertaining to transactions within a certain region, and engaging in "enhanced surveillance."
"There's something called a Suspicious Activity Report if a certain amount of money gets wired," added Bessent.
According to guidance released in October by FinCEN, financial institutions are required to "file a SAR if the institution knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect that the transaction or series of transactions are designed to evade [currency transaction reporting] requirements."
After Ingraham suggested the threshold was $10,000, Bessent said, "We're lowering that to $3,000."
In addition to significantly lowering the threshold for a SAR, Bessent said that "from now on, anyone who wires money out from one of these money-service businesses has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance."
"If you are on public assistance, we are going to start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country," added Bessent.
"Our generosity has been taken advantage of."
The treasury secretary further suggested that if a so-called asylum seeker is wiring money out of the country, "one of two things must be true: You are getting too much money and your benefits should be cut, or you are part of this conspiracy."
Days before President Donald Trump announced the termination of the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia, BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo and investigative reporter Ryan Thorpe detailed the alleged direction of stolen taxpayer funds by Somalis in America to terrorists abroad.
According to the duo's City Journal report, federal counterterrorism sources confirmed "that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab."
Al-Shabaab is a Somalia-based, Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization committed to waging a global jihad.
One confidential source told Rufo and Thorpe that "the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the current state of America's trade war with China is "unsustainable," signaling support for a de-escalation between the two countries.
When asked if the China tariffs will come down, Bessent told reporters during a media roundtable Wednesday that "both sides believe that the current status quo is unsustainable." The United States imposed a 145% tariff on Chinese imports, and China subsequently retaliated with a 125% tariff on the United States.
Nevertheless, Bessent assured reporters that 'we are moving towards certainty.'
Bessent also added that "both sides are waiting to speak to the other," clarifying that the trade negotiations between the United States and China have not begun.
"I think at this point there would have to be a de-escalation by both sides," Bessent said. "I would be surprised if they went down in a mutual way."
Bessent also said that President Donald Trump has not yet made any unilateral offers to de-escalate.
Because a trade agreement has not yet been reached, some American companies are reportedly reluctant to hire during this period of uncertainty. Nevertheless, Bessent assured reporters that "we are moving towards certainty."
"It's a three-legged stool, and everyone seems to want to focus on one leg, which is tariffs," Bessent said. "The underreported story is that tax is going better than expected, and the Republican unity around that has been very strong."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
President Donald Trump raised eyebrows Friday by sharing a video on Truth Social that claims he purposefully crashed the stock market to "push cash into treasuries." Trump's timing was especially provocative because his rollout of tariffs the previous day resulted in a multi-trillion dollar market wipeout.
Trump shared a video by a supporter that was posted to X Thursday evening with the caption, "Trump is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers."
The video — which appropriates narration from a March 13 Instagram post by finance influencer Brian Decker — first appeared on a TikTok page that previously accused Hollywood elites of eating mermaids.
In an apparent validation of the video and Decker's core theory, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller noted, "Genius! You have to watch this video!"
In the video, a seemingly computer-generated voice states: "Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he's doing it on purpose, and this is why Warren Buffet just said Trump is making the best economic moves he's seen in over 50 years."
There appears to be no evidence of Warren Buffett publicly making such an assertion in recent weeks.
'He's taking from the rich short-term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices.'
On the contrary, in a CBS News interview that aired nearly two weeks before the TikTok video was published, Buffett told talking head Norah O'Donnell, "Tariffs are actually — we've had a lot of experience with them — they’re an act of war, to some degree."
When asked whether tariffs might lead to higher inflation, Buffett said, "Over time, they are a tax on goods. I mean, the Tooth Fairy doesn't pay 'em!"
According to the TikTok video, Trump intentionally crashed the stock market in order to "push cash into treasuries, which forces the [Federal Reserve] to slash interest rates in May, and those lower rates give the Fed the ability to refinance trillions of debt very inexpensively. It also weakens the dollar and drops mortgage rates."
The narrator notes further that Trump's tariffs amount to a "genius play," forcing "companies to build here to dodge them. It also forces farmers to sell more of their products here in the U.S. to bring grocery prices way down. We've already seen this with eggs."
The video shared by the Republican president concludes by asserting he is effectively engaged in a wealth redistribution scheme: "Now remember, 94% of all stocks are owned only by 8% of Americans so Trump, he's taking from the rich short-term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices."
Blaze News reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
'It's definitely not some sort of fringe conspiracy theory.'
There has been speculation in recent days and weeks that Trump has, as Decker hypothesized, been pushing for a crash or at the very least significant market chaos.
Charlie McElligott, a strategist at Nomura, told clients in early March that Trump and his administration needed an engineered recession to trigger a growth slowdown and disflation that would result in Fed rate cuts and a weaker dollar, reported MarketWatch.
"It's definitely not some sort of fringe conspiracy theory," Ben McMillan, CIO at IDX Advisors, told Business Insider earlier in the week. "I think it's a coin flip as to whether or not it's the intention, but there have been some data points that suggest it's a non-trivial possibility in my mind."
Among the "data points" McMillan reportedly had in mind was Trump's suggestion at Davos that he'll demand interest rates fall and the president's unconventional approaches to tackling the debt problem, such as gold card residency permits.
Trump just happened to state in a Truth Social post Friday morning, "This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates."
While Forbes took issue with various falsehoods in the TikTok video, it noted that "to that theory's credit," yields for U.S. Treasury notes collapsed this week — which will likely mean cheaper borrowing. However, Forbes noted that lower Treasury yields can alternatively be achieved without tanking the markets, namely "by restoring fixed income investors' confidence in the federal government’s fiscal health through more austere spending."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington, D.C., on Friday to finalize a deal that would afford America access to some of his country's natural wealth in exchange for investments in a reconstruction fund and a U.S. economic presence that could serve as a deterrent to future aggression from without.
Following his heated exchange with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy was reportedly told to leave the White House before the agreement could be signed. Trump noted on Truth Social, "He can come back when he is ready for Peace."
According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the so-called minerals deal — which he referred to as a "general economic agreement" — is off the table in the interim.
Bessent, who was present for the ill-fated meeting with the Ukrainian president as well as for previous attempts at closing the deal, told CBS News' Margaret Brennan on Sunday that "it is impossible to have an economic deal without a peace deal. The sine qua non for an economic deal is that Ukrainian leadership wants a peace deal."
Zelenskyy confirmed Wednesday that he was unsuccessful in pushing for an explicit security guarantee in the deal from the United States, reported the BBC.
'This is one of the biggest own goals in diplomatic history.'
"I wanted to have a sentence on security guarantees for Ukraine, and it's important that it's there," said Zelenskyy.
"I want to find a NATO path or something similar," he continued, adding, "If we don't get security guarantees, we won't have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing."
Although Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others in the administration figured they had made clear to the Ukrainian leadership that peace was a prerequisite for greater American involvement and that the deal was itself a de facto security guarantee, Zelenskyy cast doubt on the value of diplomacy during the Friday meeting, citing the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin might violate a ceasefire.
The treasury secretary told Brennan that the initial plan was for Zelenskyy to join around 16 individuals for lunch where the deal would be signed after the press conference in the Oval Office.
"We were already set up to sign the deal," said Bessent. "President Zelenskyy has thrown off the sequencing."
"Let me tell you the most tragic part of this," continued the treasury secretary. "President Trump's idea for this economic arrangement was to further intertwine the American people and Ukrainian people and show no daylight — to show the Russian leadership that there was no daylight. And President Zelenskyy came into the Oval Office and tried to relitigate in front of the world the deal."
Bessent suggested that absent a desire on Zelenskyy's part to strike a peace deal, the economic deal is dead in the water.
"I think we have to see if President Zelenskyy wants to proceed," said Bessent. "What's the use in having an economic agreement that's going to be rendered moot if he wants the fighting to continue?"
Bessent told Fox News' Laura Ingraham hours after the foiled deal closing, "This is one of the biggest own goals in diplomatic history."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
The penny’s detractors nickel and dime us to death with their arguments for efficiency over and against tradition.
In addition to congressional investigation, ActBlue faces a wave of departures among its top officials.
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com