Updated on: December 3, 2025 / 8:06 PM EST / CBS News
The Treasury Department is investigating whether Minnesota tax and welfare dollars were diverted to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer also announced a congressional probe into widespread fraud allegations connected to Minnesota public assistance programs.
Bessent wrote on X that the Treasury is “investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.” He shared a Nov. 19 report in the conservative City Journal that cited law enforcement sources alleging millions from Minnesota welfare programs “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab.” Several Minnesota Republicans, including Rep. Tom Emmer, had urged federal prosecutors to examine those allegations.
Governor Walz’s office told CBS News the governor has said he welcomes an investigation into where defrauded welfare money went and will cooperate with investigators. Comer released an excerpt of a letter to Walz saying the Oversight Committee “has serious concerns about how you as the Governor, and the Democrat-controlled administration, allowed millions of dollars to be stolen,” and requested documents and communications showing what the administration knew about the fraud and whether it acted to limit or halt investigations.
Minnesota has faced multiple large-scale fraud probes. Dozens have been charged in a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future and partners; federal prosecutors allege the group stole federal nutrition aid by falsely claiming to distribute meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities have also brought fraud charges related to housing aid and autism programs in the state.
Many defendants in these alleged schemes are members of Minnesota’s sizable Somali community. A Somali American former investigator in the Minnesota attorney general’s office wrote in an opinion piece last year that community members are often victims as well as participants in fraud. The allegations have prompted sharp national attention and political rhetoric: President Trump has repeatedly criticized Somali immigrants in Minnesota, claimed the state is a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” announced plans to end temporary deportation protections for Somali residents, and asserted without evidence that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country.”
Walz and other Minnesota Democrats have defended the Somali community. The governor told reporters in response to claims about al Shabaab: “Do not paint an entire group of people with that same brush, demonizing them, putting them at risk, when there is no proof of that.”
Claims that state funds could be flowing to al Shabaab and other terror groups have circulated for years in Minnesota. A 2019 report by the state Office of the Legislative Auditor said it was “unable to substantiate” allegations that Child Care Assistance Program funding was going to terrorist groups, though it did not rule out the possibility that state funds might have been sent overseas and eventually reached terrorists.
Andy Lugar, a former U.S. attorney for Minnesota who served under the Obama and Biden administrations, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that those charged in the Feeding Our Future case “were looking to get rich, not fund overseas terrorism.”