The Billion-Dollar Betrayal: Senator Kennedy Demands Jail Time for Crooks and Politicians in Minnesota Fraud Scandal

In a floor speech that quickly went viral and ignited a firestorm across the political landscape, Senator John Kennedy delivered an unvarnished, deeply emotional condemnation of what he termed a “disgusting” and “massive” $1 billion welfare fraud scheme that flourished in the state of Minnesota. Far from a routine policy address, the Senator’s words were a raw expression of outrage and a direct challenge to the political establishment, arguing that this calculated theft from the American taxpayer was not just a crime, but a deep betrayal of the nation’s core values of charity and generosity.

“The American people are the most generous people in the entire world,” Kennedy began, setting the stage by reminding his audience of the foundational promise of America: to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the sick. He emphasized the trillions of dollars spent annually to help friends and neighbors who are less fortunate—a rare and beautiful commitment, he noted, in a world where many would “let you die in a ditch.” It is this profound wellspring of generosity, funded by the pockets of hard-working taxpayers, that he argued was viciously exploited.

It is this context of national kindness that made the revelations he presented so infuriating. The Senator confessed that discovering the scale of the malfeasance made him not just “irritated”—a word he quickly corrected—but “angry,” stating with visceral honesty that it made him want to “knee someone in the groin.” What he described next, he warned, was “deeply disgusting” and “clown world on steroids.” The astonishing truth, he detailed, was a multi-year, multi-scheme operation that systematically looted federal welfare funds, primarily centered within the Somali community in Minneapolis and involving leaders and businesses of Somali ancestry.

A Multi-Headed Monster: The Three Schemes of the Billion-Dollar Heist

Federal prosecutors have uncovered that over the last five years, more than $1 billion in American taxpayer money was brazenly stolen through three elaborate, interconnected fraud schemes. While the Senator stressed that he was not criticizing the entire Somali community, noting that “facts aren’t racist; facts are facts,” he highlighted the demographic reality that 78 of the 86 people charged so far were of Somali ancestry. The sophistication of the criminals was evident in their methods, which targeted some of the most sympathetic and vital areas of public assistance.

Scheme 1: The ‘Feeding Our Future’ Deception

The largest and arguably most publicized scheme revolved around a non-profit called “Feeding Our Future.” The organization successfully petitioned Minnesota’s welfare authorities—who administer federal funds—by claiming they needed money to feed hungry children in the Somali community. It sounded like a noble cause, but the reality was a grotesque parody of charity.

The program started small, but quickly ballooned, reaching claims of up to $100 million per year. The money was funneled to businesses, mostly Somali-owned, supposedly to set up feeding sites. The central, tragic fact, Kennedy underscored, was that “there were no hungry children,” or at least, none were getting the money. Instead, the proprietors of these shell feeding sites were spending the stolen funds on luxurious personal items: “yachts and vacations and jewelry and and and furniture for their home.” The money intended for a child’s hot meal was instead buying a criminal’s gilded lifestyle.

Scheme 2: Profiting from Homelessness

The second scheme targeted funds dedicated to housing the homeless—another pillar of American charity. A nonprofit, again established by an individual of Somali ancestry, convinced the Minnesota authorities they needed millions to house the state’s most vulnerable. Like the first scheme, the claims grew exponentially, starting at $2.6 million in 2020 and soaring to $104 million annually in subsequent years. Once again, the charitable intent was a façade. “None of the money was going for housing,” Kennedy stated plainly. The providers and the coordinating nonprofit simply “put the money in their pocket.” The desperate needs of the homeless were used as a shield to facilitate the wholesale looting of the Treasury.

Scheme 3: Bribing Parents to Lie About Autistic Children

The third scheme was perhaps the most morally repugnant, centering on services for autistic children. Under the guise of providing specialized medical care, a group of providers went to the welfare department for funding. To meet the massive claim amounts they were demanding—which escalated from $3 million to a staggering $400 million a year—they needed children to treat. They found them by going to parents in the Somali community and offering a bribe, anywhere from $400 to $1,500 per child, to falsely certify their non-autistic children as autistic. This was a callous act of exploitation, leveraging a vulnerable child’s potential diagnosis for quick, illicit cash, and proving the depths of cynicism to which the fraudsters sank. The leader of this scheme, Asha Farban Hassan, was also allegedly involved in the “Feeding Our Future” scam, demonstrating the sophisticated and coordinated nature of the criminal enterprise.

The Political Malpractice: Silencing Whistleblowers and Enabling Theft

The sheer scale and long duration of the fraud naturally led to a pressing question: How could this happen? Why didn’t state officials catch it sooner? The answer, according to Senator Kennedy, is as disturbing as the theft itself: political negligence and cowardice.

Rank-and-file employees at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the agency administering the programs, did become suspicious. When they tried to cut off the rising claims, the crooks hit back with a devastatingly effective strategy: they weaponized accusations of racism.

The organizers of “Feeding Our Future” reportedly threatened the state agency, sending emails and making phone calls that failing to approve new applicants from “minority-owned businesses” would result in a lawsuit and “accusations of racism that would be sprawled across the news.” They told the state, “If you stop giving us this money, we’re going to call you racist and we’re going to sue you.”

And according to the Senator, it worked. The legislative auditor in Minnesota confirmed that “the threat of litigation and the negative press affected how the state politicians use their regulatory power.” A fraud investigator in the Attorney General’s office put an even finer point on it: there was a perception that “forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community which is a core voting block for Democrats.”

Kennedy directly referenced the sentiment of investigators who felt that the 80,000-strong Somali voting block was crucial for Democrats to win in Minneapolis and, by extension, the state. The chilling conclusion: “The politicians did nothing.”

The Retaliation and the Al-Shabaab Allegation

The tragedy deepens with the allegations made by the very people who tried to stop the theft. Hundreds of employees from the Department of Human Service, frustrated and unable to get action from their superiors, took to social media to voice their despair. In a direct quote cited by Kennedy, they publicly accused Governor Tim Waltz: “Governor Tim Waltz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota.”

The employees alleged that they informed Waltz’s office of the fraud early on, but instead of partnership, they received the “opposite response.” They claimed Governor Waltz “systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, using threats, using repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.” The employees felt “scary, isolating” and abandoned by both the administration and an “indifferent mainstream media.”

As if the local betrayal wasn’t enough, Senator Kennedy concluded with a devastating, albeit unverified, allegation currently under investigation by prosecutors: that a portion of the stolen $1 billion allegedly went to Al-Shabaab, the notorious terrorist organization in Somalia. Kennedy noted the claim, sourced from the Senate City Journal, but stated he did not know if it was true. However, the mere fact that prosecutors are “desperately trying to get to the bottom of it” elevates the scandal from a matter of state corruption to one of national security. Al-Shabaab is a group that “hate[s] Americans, they’re terrorists, they want to kill Americans,” making the possibility of U.S. taxpayer money funding their operations a profoundly alarming prospect.

The Price of Political Paralysis

Senator Kennedy’s ultimate demand was simple, powerful, and necessary: “Man, these people ought to all be put in jail, including the politicians.” He closed his remarks by once again dismantling the media’s supposed fear of discussing the facts, reaffirming that the issue is not race, but crime and betrayal. The $1 billion stolen was money that could have gone to “people who really were homeless and children who really were hungry and kids who through no fault of their own really were autistic.”

This theft resonates far beyond Minneapolis because it highlights a deeper crisis facing the American people: the corrosive effect of political mismanagement on the national wallet. As Kennedy pivoted to a brief discussion on inflation, he tied the two issues together, reminding the chamber that moms and dads across America are already struggling to sleep at night, worried about rising costs of living, housing, and insurance premiums.

He noted that while the rate of inflation has decreased—a state called “disinflation”—prices are still rising, just less quickly. The only way to get prices down, through deflation, risks a recession and mass unemployment, an outcome currently playing out in China. A better solution, he argued, is to increase incomes through tax reform, regulatory reform, and a common-sense healthcare system.

The theft in Minnesota is a direct hit on the people already struggling to pay their bills. When taxpayers are forced to “pay more to live worse,” and then see a billion dollars of their hard-earned money—money they donated out of generosity—stolen by crooks and allegedly enabled by politicians seeking votes, the frustration boils over into legitimate outrage. Senator Kennedy’s speech was not just about the numbers; it was about the moral bankruptcy that allows such a systemic failure to persist. His call for justice is a necessary step to restore not only the taxpayer funds but also the precious trust that underpins America’s extraordinary generosity.