Reports continue to surface about how the Minnesota Attorney General's Office has handled the recent $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Chad Hartman to discuss the reports critical of his actions and share why he feels they are not legitimate.
Ellison has continued to defend his office's handling of the fraud case since it was made public in September. Now he is doing so after two former senior members of the AG's office were critical of Ellison's handling of it.
The former members, who remained unnamed, spoke with the Star Tribune, saying that more could have been done before the federal government got involved.
The sources even went as far as to suggest that actions could have been taken to shut the organization down, before most of the payments were made.
However, Ellison disagrees with the paper's reporting on what he could have done, and he says that unnamed sources most likely knew nothing of the case.
“I think it was incorrect, I think it was poorly informed. The statement doesn’t indicate whether they were working with our office even during that period of time so they don’t know about the intricacies of the investigation,” Ellison said.
The dozens indicted are accused of stealing millions of dollars meant to feed needy children by submitting fraudulent paperwork and phony invoices. Instead, investigators say the perpetrators used the money on everything from new cars to expensive real estate.
When it comes to the work done on the case, Ellison said that multiple agencies, several at the federal level, worked hard to ensure the right things were done.
“I just want to defend the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Ellison said, adding that he wants to praise the efforts from “all the agencies that worked to bring these 50 people to indictment, five of whom have pled guilty already.”
As for the report, Ellison continued to claim that the sources were not legitimate, with his biggest issue being that they remained unnamed. Hartman pushed back, defending the paper and those who wrote the report.
Ellison responded, saying, “you should ask them then. Maybe you should ask them, ‘Why would you use an unnamed source? What did you know about them? Did you verify that they had direct knowledge of this fraud?’”
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