The Somali Muslim ‘Feeding Our Future’ fraud was massive in scope. It was one of a series of Somali frauds that has gone nationwide with President Trump commenting on it and Democrats rushing to their defense.
In 2019, Feeding Our Future distributed $3.4 million in taxpayer food aid funds to the non-profits it was sponsoring, In 2020, that shot up to $42 million and then up to $197 million in 2021.
Safari Restaurant, which boasts “traditional Somali cuisine” like french fries and safari chicken quesadilla, where Rep. Ilhan Omar had celebrated her victory party, applied to participate in the Federal Child Nutrition program.
When the money was denied, Feeding Our Future complained that “minority-owned businesses serving almost exclusively economically disadvantaged children of color” were being denied the right to serve “culturally relevant foods” to “youth” during a “national emergency”.
Crying racism worked and at its peak Safari claimed to be feeding 6,000 children a day. That’s a lot of children. Documents note that the Somali eatery claimed to be serving a comparable number of meals to “the entire St. Paul public school district.”
The Feds staked out various Feeding Our Future meal sites and found no one at the places that were supposed to be feeding 50,000 children. According to the FBI, the money being stolen wasn’t used to feed children, it went into various shell companies and fronts operated by Somalis and was used to buy everything from a Porsche to African properties.
Now, Bill Glahn at American Experiment, who was responsible for much of the original reporting on the case, has come across a tape featuring some of the alleged Somali fraudsters and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants.
Ellison describes his interventions with then-DHS Commissioner Jodi Harpstead. Ellison states on the recording that “we are in the middle of the battle with the agencies now”. Ellison asserts that: ‘Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible.’
Safari Restaurant is referenced by name… Partners in Quality Care (Partners in Nutrition) and Feeding Our Future are first mentioned. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s connection to Safari Restaurant is mentioned…
Ellison agrees with the proposition that there is state agency discrimination against East African businesses. “Just being able to say, just getting the question, just getting the inquiry from the AG is sometimes enough to make people knock it off.”
Ellison’s visitors start getting into the details of their big beef with MDE. Ellison asks his guests basic questions about the food programs, how they operate and specific complaints about MDE.
Specifically, the request is for him, in the AG’s statutory role as attorney for state agencies, to intervene on behalf of these small businesses subject to racist government overregulation. Ellison assures his audience, “Of course, I’m here to help,” and “Let’s go fight these people.”
All of this is really important because one reason Feeding Our Future was able to keep on pulling off its fraud were the claims of racism and discrimination.
MDE or the Minnesota Department of Education tried to pull back and was accused of racial discrimination.
When MDE identified the unexplained growth of Feeding Our Future, MDE immediately reported those activities to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Midwest Regional Office, USDA’s Office of Inspector General, and the FBI until we were able to find someone who would take the troubling spending as seriously as we were. When MDE stopped payments, Feeding our Future hit back with accusations of racism and a sham lawsuit. Because of Feeding our Future’s misrepresentations in that lawsuit, a court instructed the payments to continue.
No one expects anything useful from Ellison’s office or local authorities, but it may be time for the FBI to see how high the fraud went. AG Keith Ellison mentions Gov. Tim Walz as agreeing with him and them. That’s about as high as it can go in the state.
The next question is what Ellison, the state AG, and Walz, the governor, knew and when did they know it.
