The growing social services scandal in Minnesota — now reckoned to amount to billions of dollars — raises the possibility that the state’s two term Democratic governor, Tim Walz, could face criminal jeopardy. 

Congressman James Comer, who leads the House Oversight Committee, is widening his probe into the scandal, which is centered on Minnesota’s Somali community. This week he took to Fox News to declare that “The walls are caving in on Tim Walz,” who was Vice President Kamala Harris’s choice as a running mate in the 2024 election. They lost to President Trump.

While regular citizens are not usually required to report crimes, public officials like Mr. Walz are usually held to a higher standard.  They are generally seen to have a fiduciary duty to protect state assets. Actively concealing a felony could amount to the crime of “misprision of felony” or, alternatively to obstruction of justice.  A failure to report could —theoretically — even lead to a charge of conspiracy, with the silent party accused of being an accessory to a crime.  

Mr. Walz has a national reputation due to his service as Ms. Harris’s running mate, and has become a lightning rod for criticism of how such staggering fraud could have gone unnoticed for years until two New York-based publications, the New York Post and City Journal, an outlet of the conservative Manhattan Institute, published investigations. 

Earlier this month, Mr. Walz sought to deflect negative attention from the Somali community, telling reporters that society “should be holding a lot of white men accountable for the crimes that they have committed,” rather than focusing on one ethnic group. Mr. Walz has also said he is accountable, as the fraud occurred “on my watch.” He added that “I am accountable for this, and more importantly, I am the one that will fix it.” 

Mr. Comer announced his intention to invite whistleblowers to testify under oath and subpoena banks that operate out of Minnesota. He added that “hopefully we’ll have some criminal referrals at the end of this investigation.” Once a criminal referral is issued by Congress, it is up to the Department of Justice — led by Attorney General Pam Bondi — to seek indictments, perhaps of the governor himself.  

Ms. Bondi decided to do just that following the criminal referrals issued to the former director of the FBI, James Comey, as New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The current director of the FBI, Kash Patel, on Sunday posted to X that he has “surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.” He adds that “The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. “  

Mr. Comer says that Mr. Walz “deserves due process” but that Mr. Walz will “have a lot of explaining to do.” The third highest ranking Republican congressman, Tom Emmer —  a Minnesotan — declared last week that “as this thing mushrooms, number one, let’s make sure we hold the people accountable. I will tell you what I believe. My personal opinion is there is no way that $1 billion-plus got its way out of the Walz administration without someone in the administration being aware and/or complicit.”

Mr. Comer, in a statement last week, declared that “The House Oversight Committee is aggressively investigating widespread fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs and the failures of Governor Walz’s administration that allowed taxpayer funds to be funneled to terrorist networks responsible for the deaths of Americans.” The reference is to allegations that stolen money made its way to the coffers of Al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group. 

Longtime critics of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party – what the state’s Democratic Party is known as —  accuse Mr. Walz of looking the other way at misconduct in the Somali community since they wield significant political power as a voting bloc.  

About 100,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, most of them in the Twin Cities area. The state’s powerful Lutheran Church welcomed Somali migrants to Minnesota, starting in the early 1990s when the Somali state collapsed into anarchy. In 1992, the U.S. started issuing visas to the Somali community. Initially, many Somalis worked on the kill floors of Minnesota’s meatpacking facilities, but they have since branched out to many other means of making a living, including, allegedly, widespread fraud.

Prosecutors claim that more than half of the $18 billion in taxpayer funding spent on 14 Medicaid programs in Minnesota since 2018 was stolen. More than 90 people have been charged, the vast majority of Somali ancestry. The lead federal prosecutor, John Thompson, said in a statement earlier this month that “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It is staggering industrial-scale fraud.” 

The Minnesota Somali community  received little national attention until Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali native, made national waves as a vocal member of  the “Squad.” The tipping point, however, was likely the mayoral campaign of Somali-American Omar Fateh, who made a strong if ultimately unsuccessful 2025 run at Minneapolis City Hall. A video of Mr. Fateh at a campaign rally waving a Somali flag and speaking Somali was tweeted out by Mr. Trump’s adviser, Stephen Miller.

In recent weeks,Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced Ms. Omar and Minnesota’s Somali community, insulted Mr. Walz’s competence and mental faculties, and said he should face consequences.

The federal fraud investigation, which had actually been quietly underway since 2022, and has yielded some 60 convictions. Mr. Walz laments how his state’s “generosity has been taken advantage of by an organized group of fraudsters and criminals.” Fresh scrutiny of him has emerged in recent days, though, after a young independent journalist, Nick Shirley, visited multiple childcare centers that appeared to be inactive despite receiving millions of dollars in funds.

One location was festooned with a banner that read “Quality Learing (sic) Center.” It was abandoned even though it is supposed to serve 99 children and received some $4 million from Minnesota’s taxpayers. Mr. Shirley told Fox News over the weekend that a “kindergartner could figure out that there is fraud going on.” Mr. Waltz’s office responded to Mr. Shirley’s investigation, which has been viewed millions of times, by insisting that “The governor has worked for years to crack down on fraud.”

Mr. Shirley’s 40-minute report has garnered more than 100 million views and impressions on YouTube and X.