House Oversight Committee exposed Tim Walz, Keith Ellison as partisan liars

Despite having tons of practice, Tim Walz and Keith Ellison aren't skillful liars, disproving the cliche that practice makes perfect. This MPR article highlights Gov. Tim Walz's contentious testimony before the House Oversight Committee. According to the MPR article, "Walz and Ellison defended the state’s response, acknowledging fraud had taken place in state programs and highlighting steps they’d taken to stop it. Republicans countered that not enough was done and fraud blossomed; they issued a report that they said was based on whistleblower reports and other interviews with state officials."

Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz "of trying to 'hide behind' a court order to explain why the state resumed payments to Feeding Our Future (FOF), a nonprofit at the center of a massive pandemic-era child nutrition fraud scheme." Lying to Jim Jordan is stupid, which is what Gov. Walz tried to do:

This is when things got contentious:

Jordan pointed to a 2022 court-authorized news release from then-Ramsey County District Court Judge John H. Guthmann that disputed the governor’s characterization of the events.

"On September 22, 2022, Governor Tim Walz told the media that the Minnesota Department of Education attempted to end payments to FOF because of possible fraud, but that Judge Guthmann ordered payments to continue in April 2021. That is also false," the release stated.

"As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF."

Then Gov. Walz started making excuses:

Walz responded that his understanding at the time was based on legal advice from within the agency.

"The agency believed that the court had required them to make those payments," Walz said, arguing the attorneys at the Department of Education interpreted it differently.

"I just simply know what the attorneys at the agency believe that it was a misinterpretation," he added.

Jordan rejected that explanation, telling the governor: "You’re trying to hide behind some pretend court order. Some court order that didn’t exist."

During the Vice Presidential Debate in Sept. of 2024, the moderator asked him why he'd said that he'd been in Tianenmen Square when he was actually still in Nebraska. Walz said that he sometimes got caught up in the moment. Then he admitted that he "sometimes a knucklehead." Walz is sometimes a knucklehead but, more often than not, he's just dishonest.

Thanks to Bill Glahn's investigation into the Keith Ellison-Feeding Our Future fiasco, Ellison might be in more legal difficulty:

Ellison denies wrongdoing in secretly recorded meeting about Feeding Our Future In the aftermath of the $250 million “Feeding Our Future” fraud trial involving two of the organization’s leaders, a conservative group highlighted secret recordings of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison meeting with some representatives of the group during which they asked for his help.

They were upset because they said various state agencies were trying to shut down their food operations, which ultimately turned out to be part of a massive fraud.

"This has my attention," he told the group during a meeting in December 2021, a month before the “Feeding Our Future” fraud began to make headlines. "I’m extremely frustrated by it, but we are in the middle of the battle with the agencies now. And I can tell you now (Governor Tim) Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible."

The recordings were first made public by the conservative "Center of the American Experiment." It’s unclear who recorded the meeting.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Ellison-Feeding Our Future fiasco is under federal inveestigation.