Minnesota GOP lawmaker Robbins challenges Walz over billions in fraud

A Republican state lawmaker hopes to oust Minnesota’s governor. Tim Walls In next year’s gubernatorial election, Minnesotans, under the Democratic governor, are accused of having “billions of our tax dollars stolen by criminals.”

State Rep. Kristen Robbins, in an interview with Fox News Digital, said Walz “has been a total failure” in combating fraud during his two terms as governor.

In recent weeks, Walz has faced a lot of political pressure from state and national Republicans, including the president Donald Trumpwhile authorities investigate a series of alleged multi-million dollar fraud schemes, including the governor’s handling of a massive relief program that federal prosecutors say has turned into “the largest pandemic fraud in the United States.”

Robins, chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and Oversight Committee, has made the issue a top priority in her GOP campaign for governor. She is one of a few leading contenders in a crowded field of Republicans hoping to take on Walz next November as the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee seeks a third term as governor.

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State Rep. Christine Robbins is running for the Republican nomination for governor of Minnesota. (Christine Robbins campaign)

“I have been chair of the Fraud Committee since last January, and that has really been my main focus during the last year of the Legislature,” she said. “And even though we’re out of session, I’ve continued to keep the fraud commission holding hearings monthly, because this case is so massive, we still don’t have our arms around it. So we’re continuing to dig in.”

The first federal charges against the alleged fraudsters in the case were filed three years ago. Fast forward to today, there are now more than 75 defendants in the $250 million scheme.

The case revolves around a non-profit organization called Feeding Our Future, which partnered with… Minnesota Department of Education and the US Department of Agriculture to distribute meals to children.

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Prosecutors charged that Feed Our Future and its food distribution sites raised millions of dollars by providing false meal numbers and invoices to deceive state and federal officials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the accused persons are of Somali origin. Minnesota has the largest Somali population of any state in the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department says it is investigating whether tax money from public assistance programs in Minnesota reached Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, which the U.S. has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz applauds the House of Representatives before delivering his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature at the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune via AP)

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives, through the Oversight Committee, opened an investigation into Walz’s handling of the relief program.

Robbins argued that under Walz’s watch, “Billions of our tax dollars have been stolen by criminals, Minnesotans don’t have the services they need, and Minnesotans are working hard for their money and to see all this money shipped overseas.”

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“The Minnesotans now own a resort in Kenya. They own an apartment in Nairobi. They own a cooking school in Ohio,” she said. “It’s ridiculous, the things we’ve wasted our money on, and so I’m grateful to our federal partners who are prosecuting these cases, but we’ve got to have a new governor who’s not going to have a culture of fraud or excuses.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Walz pledged to “address the issue of fraud, people who are defrauding the people of the state of Minnesota and the state of Minnesota. We know now that these programs have been paused. We have an independent outside auditor. We have issued new powers that we have to stop the payments and be able to make sure that this picture of what is there. The people who did this are going to go to prison.”

“My goal is to make sure that those who move forward have much better tools, more assurances around the programs,” the governor added.

But Robbins accused Walz and his administration of “being too late on this. They’ve stepped up recently, but the things they did, they already had the authority to stop payments when there were credible allegations of fraud. They already had the authority to do prepayment reviews and shut down some of these programs.”

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She stressed: “They did not do this until we held their feet to the fire and exposed all the fraud.”

Trump has repeatedly blamed Somali residents in Minnesota for the scam. On Tuesday, he called immigrants from Somalia “trash” and claimed they “destroyed Minnesota.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after speaking to troops via video from his Mar-a-Lago home on Thanksgiving, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Last month, the president announced he was ending temporary deportation protections for Somali immigrants in Minnesota, and claimed that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great state.”

Walz on Thursday called Trump’s comments “vile racist lies” and “a slur against our fellow Minnesotans.”

Asked about the president’s comments, Robbins said: “The bulk of the fraud we’ve uncovered so far is in the Somali community. And one of the reasons the fraud continues based on the whistleblowers who reached out to me is because they were afraid to say it out loud, because they were afraid of political retaliation or being called racists.”

“So we have to say it. Say it out loud. Most of the scams happen in the Somali community,” she added.

But Robbins also emphasized that “most of the best whistleblowers are also from the Somali community. Both are true. And that’s certainly where most of the fraud is. But there are also a lot of people in the Somali community who want to clean it up.”

Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, Rep. Christine Robbins, highlights her anti-fraud efforts during a campaign press conference. (Christine Robbins campaign)

Robbins told Fox News Digital that her anti-fraud efforts could bolster her bid for the Republican nomination for governor.

“I definitely know where all the problems lie and how this huge fraud scandal was allowed to flourish under Tim Walz,” she said. “I think I can talk to him directly and confront him directly in the discussion and in the details. I think I’m the most qualified.”

“I’m also the most qualified to solve this problem when I’m governor,” Robbins added, “So I’ve already put together my fraud plan on how we’re going to standardize internal controls, how we’re going to have an inspector general’s office, how we’re going to hold state employees accountable. So I think I’m going to be the one who can solve Minnesota’s problem.”

Robbins, who was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018, represents a purple district in suburban Minneapolis. She touted that in the crowded field of GOP gubernatorial contenders, she is “the only conservative Republican who has proven to be a winner in the suburbs.”

Robbins served as Minnesota state chairman for former U.S. Ambassador and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential campaign.

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On Thursday, Haley praised Robins in a fundraising email to supporters.

“We must stop Tim Walz and elect a leader who will fight to end this corruption!” Haley wrote. ““Christine Robbins has spent her career fighting fraud and will do the same as governor.”