Lawmakers grill Ellison over 2021 meeting with group involved in Feeding Our Future fraud
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State lawmakers got their first chance to ask Attorney General Keith Ellison about a meeting he joined in 2021 with business owners tied to the Feeding Our Future nutrition aid scandal.
The GOP-led House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee invited Ellison, a Democrat, to address a recently released tape that recorded the conversation and to outline the work his office is doing.
Republicans on the panel raised questions about why the attorney general met with the group and what he said during a meeting with people his office also had under scrutiny. They played clips of the tape in which the business owners aired concerns with Ellison about the state withholding federal reimbursements for the Feeding Our Future nutrition program earlier that year.
The lawmakers sounded puzzled as to why Ellison would agree to meet with the group and agree to look into their concerns without realizing they were the subject of state and federal probes.
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“The fraudsters literally go through step by step, the how they do it, the who's involved. At the very beginning of the tape, they spell their names,” Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, said. “They go through and talk about specifically the program that was being defrauded. And then you said, ‘Hey, tell me more about that.’”
Ellison said he frequently meets with constituents and listens to their concerns about the workings of state government. Ellison said that while a file had been opened in his office to look into the businesses that received Feeding Our Future money, at the time he wasn’t aware about the specific allegations at play involving fraud. Federal search warrants in the investigation weren’t issued until a month later, he said.
“What I knew then is that there was an ongoing dispute between vendors and the state. What I knew then is that a court had found the client in contempt. What I knew then is that there had been this dispute playing out in the press,” Ellison said.
He said he didn’t take any action to help the business owners and rejected a campaign contribution that was offered to him in exchange for help getting funds unlocked. Ellison said the tape is proof that the people accused of — and some convicted of — fraud tried to use him but he didn’t take the bait.
“The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. What did I do for these people? Nothing. I investigated after the conversation, and then what did we do? We cooperated to help get these people found accountable as they eventually were,” Ellison said.
The business owners would later be indicted and convicted on charges related to misuse of the federal funds.
Feeding Our Future was the umbrella group that sponsored meal distribution sites for children in need. Federal prosecutors say the organization and its partners siphoned more than $250 million from the program during the COVID-19 pandemic and spent it on homes, luxury items, and travel and didn’t serve anywhere near the number of meals for which they received reimbursements.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis has charged 70 defendants since September 2022. More than three dozen have pleaded guilty. Juries at two recent trials convicted seven others, including Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock. Bock is jailed and awaiting sentencing.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel handed lengthy prison terms to the first defendants she sentenced. Mukhtar M. Shariff and Mohamed J. Ismail are serving sentences of 17 ½ and 12 years, respectively. The two were among five defendants connected to a small Shakopee restaurant convicted at the first Feeding Our Future trial in June.
At Monday’s hearing, other lawmakers noted how Ellison appeared to voice more sympathy for the grant recipients rather than state departments or taxpayers.
“Why was the focus on the East African community business owners keeping their businesses open when those businesses were, in fact, grant recipients entrusted with the public responsibility?” Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, asked Ellison.
Ellison said he wanted to hear out the group and took the meeting at the request of a clergy member. But he didn’t offer any support when he returned to his team and realized the individuals were involved in improper use of grant funds.
“When I got the questions answered, it was clear to me that these people are not good faith actors. I did nothing for them,” Ellison said. “There's no claim that I went out and advocated or lobbied for them, because when I did my due diligence, I found that they were not worthy of that.”
Democrats on the committee branded the hearing a political stunt. They said lawmakers should learn from the effort by the business owners to take advantage of an elected official.
“I think, the general tenor of this committee, which is, it's not about the policy. It is we don't hear bills. It is about gotcha moments that then they repeat,” said Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis. “That's not a useful conversation to what we're actually trying to figure out, which is, how do we protect the government programs that people rely on on taxpayer dollars?”
The committee’s chair Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, said she wanted to hold the hearing to get the attorney general on the record.
“We wanted to have him answer questions on the record about his involvement, his office's responsibility,” Robbins said. “What is their role in defending agencies, versus when the agency is their client, versus meeting with people suing their agency? Those questions are important for the public to hear.”
MPR News reporter Matt Sepic contributed to this story.