by Jenna Gloeb
As Gov. Tim Walz seeks a promotion to second-in-command of the country, Congress is investigating how he allowed the largest COVID-era scam in the nation to unfold in Minnesota while serving as the head of the state.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, has subpoenaed Walz for information in connection with the Minnesota-grown Feeding Our Future scam.
“$250 million has been stolen from the American people, and keeping track of Feeding Our Future was the responsibility of the governor,” said Foxx.
Federal subpoenas seek answers
Foxx’s subpoena seeks documents to address key questions: What did Walz know? When did he know it? And why did he fail to act?
In an interview with Alpha News, Foxx emphasized that the U.S. House investigation began well before Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
“We’re not going after [Walz] because he is the vice-presidential nominee. We’re going after the state of Minnesota where he is the governor because the taxpayers of the United States have been cheated out of $250 million,” stated Foxx.
She added that it’s important “the people of this country know that Gov. Walz is not a good steward of their money.”
Feeding Our Future fraud
The Feeding Our Future scheme is widely regarded as the largest pandemic fraud in the nation.
The defendants are accused of diverting $250 million from a federal child nutrition program intended to “feed needy children,” but the funds were allegedly spent on luxury cars, jewelry, travel, and property. In Minnesota, those funds are overseen by the state’s Department of Education (MDE), part of Walz’s administration.
So far, 70 individuals have been charged, with 22 pleading guilty and five convicted.
State’s awareness and inaction
According to an audit by the state’s nonpartisan legislative auditor, MDE “created opportunities for fraud” and maintained “inadequate oversight” during the period it was dispersing money to Feeding Our Future, the name of the nonprofit at the center of the scandal.
MDE also “failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the start of the alleged fraud.”
As the first federal indictments were announced in September 2022, Walz blamed Judge John Guthmann for allegedly ordering funds to continue flowing to Feeding Our Future.
But the judge said that wasn’t true. In a rare move, Guthmann took to the press to correct what he called the “inaccurate statements by the governor” with his own public statement.
“All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to [Feeding Our Future] were made voluntarily, without any court order,” stated Guthmann.
Walz, Frey, and Feeding Our Future connections
Just days after Foxx issued the subpoena, attorney Nancy Hylden, who was named in media reports as an attorney for Feeding Our Future’s alleged mastermind Aimee Bock, held a party as she retired from the lobbying firm she founded. Hylden’s name was listed on annual reports Feeding Our Future filed with the state in 2019 and 2020, according to Wedge Live.
She was recently photographed (pictured here) with Walz at a “Harris Victory Fund” fundraiser the evening before his candidacy for vice president was announced as well as during a Sept. 15, 2022, meeting.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who attended Hylden’s retirement party and whose wife was previously employed by Hylden’s firm, has also faced scrutiny for his connections to the scandal.
Three of Frey’s appointees are among those implicated in the scheme, and several individuals charged in the case donated the maximum allowable amount of $1,000 to his 2021 reelection campaign. At least 17 defendants have donated to Democrat officials, the Center of the American Experiment reported.
These political connections have also caught the attention of Congress. “We need to find out if that had something to do with the fact that the governor was not doing his job by investigating Feeding Our Future,” Foxx stated.
Alpha News reached out to Hylden about her connections to Feeding Our Future and Walz.
In an emailed response, Hylden said she was contacted shortly after Feeding Our Future was raided by the FBI and agreed to act as an “administrative point of contact” at the attorney general’s office.
“I was contacted to represent Feeding Our Future but I agreed to only temporarily be an administrative point of contact at the AG’s office while legal counsel were identified who would undertake civil representation of the organization,” Hylden explained. “Separately, Amy Bock [sic] sought criminal defense counsel. I am not a federal criminal defense attorney.”
The email continued, “On February 4, 2022, I notified the AG Charities Division that Jenn Urban had agreed to be counsel for Feeding Our Future. Jenn Urban wrote separately and asked that the registration be corrected to identify her the point of contact. The AG responded and said that they would forward the request to the registration dept. The correction was never made. I never asked for nor received payment of any kind. I was never contacted directly or indirectly by any public official to provide assistance.”
Even so, Hylden and another attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, accompanied Bock at the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis on Sept. 20, 2022, when the first federal indictments related to the Feeding Our Future scandal were announced.
Reviewing the governor’s documents
Foxx says the committee is currently investigating these relationships, as well as reviewing the paperwork sent in by Walz and the state of Minnesota.
“They have given us a lot of pages of paper, but it’s not necessarily what we need … people often provide a lot of material just to keep us off their backs, but it’s not necessarily critical to what we need to do our investigation properly,” Foxx stated. “The staff is combing through them to determine if the answers we need are included.”
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AlphaNews reporter Jenna Gloeb is an Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist, media producer, public speaker, and screenwriter.
