House Republicans grill Keith Ellison over 2021 meeting with Feeding Our Future fraudsters
Attorney General Keith Ellison answers questions during a hearing before the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee Monday, April 28, 2025 concerning a recording of his conversations with Feeding Our Future participants. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
Republicans on the House fraud prevention committee grilled Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Monday over a 2021 meeting with people ensnared in the massive Feeding Our Future scandal, which took place just a month before the FBI shut down the fraud.
In a recently unearthed audio recording, Ellison can be heard agreeing with the Feeding Our Future participants that state agencies, i.e., his clients, are discriminating against East African state contractors. The recording was made — without Ellison's knowledge — during his meeting with the vendors in December 2021. One month later, the FBI executed multiple search warrants on Feeding Our Future and other nonprofits. Federal prosecutors say the nonprofit and groups it sponsored fraudulently received $250 million in federal funds to feed hungry children during the pandemic, but the fraudsters used the money on luxury cars, real estate, jewelry and travel.
Republican members of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight and Policy Committee asked Ellison to testify about why he seemed to be siding with the Feeding Our Future participants over the state agencies that were trying to stop the fraud.
Ellison said at the time he believed he was meeting with constituents and didn't know they were involved in Feeding Our Future. After the 2021 meeting, Ellison said he spoke with his staff, who informed him that they were bad actors. Ellison said he didn't do anything the Feeding Our Future participants asked of him and refused their fundraising help in the meeting.
'The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. What did I do for these people? Nothing. I investigated after the conversation, and then what did we do? We cooperated (with the federal government) to help get these people found accountable, as they eventually were,' Ellison said Monday.
Republicans on the fraud committee prepared clips of the recording and played them for Ellison, and asked him to respond to some of the most embarrassing parts. They questioned why he didn't know the Feeding Our Future participants he met with, especially because his office had been representing the Department of Education in its legal battle with Feeding Our Future for about a year prior to the 2021 meeting.
Ellison painted himself as a politician doing run-of-the-mill constituent service and said that he doesn't know every detail of all the cases his office is working on. He argued Republicans were being unrealistic by expecting him to know who the people were because Feeding Our Future and the fraud were at the time unknown.
'It's impossible for any individual to know everything about every file that every agency does. It's simply not how large organizations work. I have highly competent managers working on this … They knew, even if I didn't know every single detail,' Ellison said. 'What I knew was that people in the community said, 'We feel like we're not being treated fairly.''
Republicans on the committee questioned the veracity of Ellison's explanations, particularly that he didn't know with whom he was meeting.
'I've got to believe that you were aware, unless your office is poorly run, which I don't believe. I think it's well-run,' Rep. Patti Anderson, R-Dellwood, told Ellison.
Democrats on the committee argued the hearing was a political hit job. Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis, praised Ellison for his work prosecuting Medicaid fraud and said the committee should be focused on working to protect public dollars, not on nearly four-year-old recordings.
'If the work of this committee is actually serious and not political, what we should be asking is, what are we learning to ensure that we are protecting public funds?' Greenman argued.
Ellison closed his remarks Monday by assuring the committee that his office is committed to combatting fraudulent activity.
'I hope we can work together to fight waste, fraud and abuse,' Ellison told the committee. 'I'm not naive. I know that we live in a political world, but if we can leave politics aside and try to figure out how to protect the public dollar, you have a partner in me.'
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