Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Newsmax on Tuesday that federal raids across the Minneapolis area amount to long-overdue accountability for what he called widespread "plain old-fashioned" fraud in Minnesota's taxpayer-funded social programs, and he disputed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's effort to claim credit for the operation.
Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, made the comments on "Ed Henry The Big Take" hours after the FBI and partner agencies executed 22 court-authorized search warrants at sites across the Twin Cities.
The targets included child care centers and five locations tied to a state program that pays providers to serve children with autism. The Minnesota attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit assisted with the autism center-related warrants.
Jordan praised the Justice Department and the FBI and rejected Walz's framing of the operation as a state-led success.
"When they start criticizing or taking credit for this, I think that's probably not accurate," he said of the governor.
"God bless the Justice Department and the FBI for doing this."
The credit dispute spilled into public view earlier in the day.
Walz, a Democrat, said on social media that the raids resulted from state agencies that "caught irregular behavior and reported it."
FBI Director Kash Patel responded that the FBI, DOJ, and Department of Homeland Security "drafted and executed every search warrant today."
Jordan tied Tuesday's operation to the broader Minnesota fraud picture, citing the Feeding Our Future scheme as a template.
State payments to that nonprofit were halted in March 2021 and resumed about a month later.
Walz has said his administration believed the courts required a resumption; a House Oversight Committee report concluded that the state voluntarily resumed the funding. Jordan said the program had been shut down "for political reasons" and was restarted on the same basis.
Sixty-five people have been convicted in the Feeding Our Future case, which prosecutors say stole roughly $250 million in pandemic-era child nutrition funds. The lead defendant, Aimee Bock, was convicted at trial.
Jordan said he expects the autism investigations to follow the same pattern.
The Feeding Our Future program "had two problems," he said. "There were no meals, and there were no kids. They were just pocketing the money."
He predicted, "the same kind of thing was happening with these autism centers."
Federal prosecutors have already brought autism program cases.
Asha Farhan Hassan pleaded guilty in December to a $14 million wire-fraud scheme through Smart Therapy LLC, and Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf was charged in a $6 million scheme tied to Star Autism Center.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson has said more than half of $18 billion paid through 14 high-risk Medicaid programs in Minnesota since 2018 may be fraudulent.
Among the sites federal agents searched Tuesday was the former location of Quality Learning Center, the child care business spotlighted in a viral December video by independent journalist Nick Shirley.
No arrests were announced.
"So, we'll see how this moves forward," Jordan said.
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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