Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told Newsmax on Wednesday that the massive fraud scandal unfolding in Minnesota may ultimately trace back to Democrat politicians — if investigators are willing to follow the money.
On "The Chris Salcedo Show," Lake, acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, argued that the scope of the alleged fraud, combined with what she described as political and media indifference, raises serious red flags about who may benefit from it.
"We need to find out. We need to follow the money trail and find out if any of that money comes right back to those politicians who are sitting in office looking the other way," Lake said.
"I have a feeling the money trail does trickle back to them, because they're acting in a way that doesn't make any sense."
Lake said the reaction, or lack thereof, from Minnesota Democrats has been telling, especially given the seriousness of the allegations involving public funds and vulnerable communities.
There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme involving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted.
Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country's largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.
A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.
Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services, and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota.
Lake also blasted media outlets for what she described as misplaced priorities and selective outrage after a right-wing influencer posted a video last Friday claiming he found that daycare centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud.
According to Lake, national media figures who long ignored the story are now scrambling, but not to expose wrongdoing.
"The media is completely out of control," she said.
"They finally show up in Minnesota. It's almost comical if it weren't so serious."
Lake pointed specifically to CNN, accusing the network of targeting whistleblowers instead of investigating the fraud itself.
"Instead of digging into this and saying, 'Wow, they missed the story, but let's dig into it now and get to the bottom of it,' they're going after [independent journalist] Nick Shirley, the guy who actually revealed this problem to the people," she said.
"They're doing more investigating of Nick Shirley than of the fraud that's right there in front of their faces."
Lake also referenced a recent claim by a man who said his business was broken into and critical documents were stolen, including children's enrollment records and checkbooks, potentially obscuring where the money went.
"I can't wait to see how CNN and MSNBC, MSDNC, handle what we just saw," Lake said. "They stole the enrollment documents of the children who were there, and they stole the checkbooks, so you couldn't see where the money was going."
She accused the media of attempting to shield Democrats from accountability.
"I can't wait to see how the media tries to cover for that obvious, ridiculous load of BS," Lake said.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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