WASHINGTON — The House Education and Workforce Committee on Wednesday issued subpoenas to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Minnesota Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over how federal prosecutors are responding to what federal prosecutors are calling the worst of the pandemic. fraud schemeetc in the country.
The subpoenas, first obtained by NBC News, require Walsh, Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis Fong to hand over documents related to oversight of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. misused millions of dollars intended to feed children during a pandemic.
Walz’s record faced new scrutiny last month after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped him as her running mate, though the new request from the Republican-led committee is part of an investigative effort that runs through 2022.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R.N.C., the committee’s chairwoman, wrote in a letter to Walz that the committee requested the information “to demonstrate the extent of your responsibilities and actions related to the massive fraud that resulted in the misuse of taxpayer dollars.” for hungry children.”
As of June state audit reportThe Minnesota Department of Education failed to adequately monitor Feeding Our Future, saying the department’s “actions and inactions created opportunities for fraud.”
State education officials are tasked with overseeing federal programs that pay groups like Feeding Our Future to provide free, nutritious meals to children. A state audit has called the Minnesota Department of Education’s oversight “inadequate.”
Jett, the top education official, submitted a written response to the report, which blamed individuals involved in the scheme. “What happened to Feeding Our Future was a disgrace – a coordinated, brazen abuse of nutrition programs that exist to ensure that low-income children have access to healthy food.” fraudsters”.
Prosecutors claim more was revealed than Feeding Our Future 250 sites across Minnesota and claimed to have received fake food in which they presented fake children’s names.
The US Department of Justice has charged 70 people in connection with this scheme. He confessed to eighteen sins, and there were five of them has been convicted in June.
Foxx, along with the Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Agriculture Committee, first requested the documents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. September 2022 After federal charges were filed in the case involving Feeding Our Future. At the time, Republicans were in the minority in the House, so they did not control the committees.
Once in the 2023 majority, Foxx and his fellow committee chairs followed the USDA. Republican group too required documents From Jett in June.
Foxx said in letters accompanying the subpoenas that both the USDA and the Minnesota Department of Education were “neither timely nor fully responsive in their production of data.”
Walz and state and federal officials have until Sept. 18 to provide the requested documents, according to the subpoenas, but none of them are required to testify.
NBC News has reached out to all those who were called for comment.