Trump Administration Led With the Wrong Agency in Minnesota

The Trump administration fumbled its Minnesota advantage when it emphasized ICE over DOJ. The Minnesota fraud scandal was exploding; it was huge and blatant; Democrats were thoroughly enmeshed in it; and it looked to reach beyond Minnesota – all the way to Somalia and terror organizations. The administration should have put all its emphasis on the DOJ’s investigation there. Instead, it sent ICE into a hotbed of extremism at a time when Democrats desperately needed their fraud scandal to disappear.

The Minnesota federal payment scandal appears gargantuan – even in context of the fraud-plagued federal COVID programs. As of early January, the administration had already charged 98 defendants in Minnesota alone, obtained 64 convictions, issued over 1,750 subpoenas, held over 1,000 witness interviews, and executed over 130 search warrants. 

Further, Democrats were implicated in the Minnesota scandal. Fraud of this size, scope, and duration does not take place unless its perpetrators are so sure they will not be caught that they become blatant about it. Such assurance only comes in one of two ways: indirectly, from long experience of having not been caught, or directly, from the perpetrators being told they will not be investigated. 

The Democrats were guilty of either complicity or incompetence. Both were damning. 

And they knew it, as Gov. Tim Walz’s stunning fall demonstrated. Walz went from being Democrats’ VP nominee less than a year ago, a short-list 2028 contender, and an incumbent seeking his third consecutive term as governor, to withdrawing from the gubernatorial race, and then, shortly thereafter, announcing that he was retiring from politics altogether. Politicians at his level do not do this unless they are convinced strong political fallout is coming.

Nor was Walz the only one swept in. As soon as the scandal became public, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan rushed to television – not to say that she would leave no stone unturned in uncovering fraud and bringing perpetrators to justice, but wearing a hijab in cringe-worthy footage that the woke culture would condemn as “cultural appropriation” if done by anyone else. Months earlier, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had pandered by speaking in Somali in his reelection victory speech. Finally, Rep. Ilhan Omar faced questions about how her and her husband’s wealth had suddenly ballooned enormously (from $51,000 at the end of 2023 to between $6 and $30 million in her 2024 congressional filing, according to the Washington Free Beacon) in a very short time – the same period of time that the federal payment fraud was occurring.

While Flanagan, Frey, and Omar’s actions and circumstances alone do not imply guilt, all invite tailor-made political commercials against them. As everyone in politics knows, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and Minnesota’s top Democrats had put themselves in position to do a lot of explaining about fraud, their responses to it, and their responsibility in it.   

As if this scandal could not get worse, U.S. taxpayer dollars went to Somalia and allegedly to a terrorist organization there. It also dovetailed with other fraud scandals – including several scandal variations in Minnesota alone. 

Finally, voters are fertile ground for such scandal stories. Many still have not recovered from their COVID losses, especially in blue areas where government lockdowns ran longest and hit hardest. Americans who have endured having their livelihoods curtailed are hardly going to accept scandals that drained their tax dollars away at the same time. 

The Trump administration had already sent DOJ into Minnesota in the wake of this burgeoning scandal. All it had to do was keep the focus there and draw itself tighter around it. The Democrats were trapped and already feeling the squeeze. Build your case. Get your “perp walks.” Trace the scandal threads to their fullest extent. 

However, the administration wanted another headline. Rather than the longer task of connecting the dots to fully form a picture already emerging, they wanted a “selfie”-gratifying immediacy. They sent ICE into a hotbed of extremism that had been stoked by years of lenient local officials.

Of course, hindsight is 20-20; however, hindsight only needed to look back to 2020. Then, Minneapolis was allowed to go up in flames for days in the wake of George Floyd’s death – peaking with abandonment of a police precinct station that was then burned by rioters. 

The reaction to ICE coming in was predictable. Democrats would have played to their extremist base – on which their political careers rest and as they had done during Minneapolis’s 2020 burning – in any case, but especially at a time when they were desperate for a distraction from the payment scandal surrounding them. And the establishment media had already shown how they were covering any ICE enforcement efforts: unsympathetic to enforcement and blind to four years of Biden-Harris’ open borders.

Into this mix of extremists, desperate Democrats, and unsympathetic establishment media, the Trump administration sent in ICE in such numbers that it allowed the focus to shift from the federal fraud scandal. 

This does not mean focus on Minnesota’s scandal cannot return between now and the midterms. Eight months is a long time in politics. What it does mean is that the focus should never have shifted. Sometimes a simple connect-the-dots picture is better than a selfie.