Fraud Against The People Vs Corruption In Government
The Republicans are coming for leadership in Minnesota over a MAJOR FALSEHOOD
There is no significant, or even easily identified or cited, corruption among Minnesota state government officials or employees.
There is unending yammering by Republicans in Minnesota about widespread and vast corruption in the state government. They are referring to something real, but not corruption, and not corrupt acts carried out by state officials or employees. Indeed, our state is pretty clean in this regard.
These lying liars are referring to the massive fraud conspiracies that hit the state when bad actors — private citizens, not state employees — stole money via programs mainly funded by COVID relief dollars. This happened across the country and in may ways, but the particular cases in Minnesota were either worse than many other places, or more publicized.
There may have been insufficient oversight of some of these programs, but there are two things you have to keep in mind. The first one, rarely talked about but important, is the simple fact that when people are lying in hospital beds with respirators, losing their jobs, or going hungry because of a terrible pandemic, getting the resources to where they need to be is more important than intense oversight, and we hope people will not be total jerks about it. In Minnesota and elsewhere, though, people were jerks, and those jerks, once convicted should, in my mind, be given very stiff sentences. They took advantage of a disaster and stuck it to all of us, heartlessly. I hope the authorities manage to hunt down those who fled the country rather than face the consequences. But I digress.
The second thing is this: In Minnesota, we have a somewhat under par technology for information processing and oversight within the state government, owing to decades of under funding because of Republican reticence to support good government. So when they complain about oversight problems now, they are complaining about about a problem they created.
Our state Republicans are as bad as Republicans anywhere (Don’t be fooled into thinking that MAGA is a southern thing, or unlikely in a nice place like Minnesota. Just look at our congressional delegation now and in the recent past.) And their incessant yammering about corruption that doesn’t exist has convinced non-MAGA and actual DFLers (Minnesota Democrats are DFLers), as well as the news media, that the state getting mugged by a bunch of criminals is corruption. It is not. It is fraud.
Have you ever had a crime committed against you? A property crime, a crime of violence, anything? I’m sure there are ways it could be said to be your fault. You should not have gone out that day, you should have had a better alarm system, you should not have worn that clothing, etc. etc. That is what we call blaming the victim. We are always at fault for crimes that happen to us; had we not existed, there would be no crime, right?
Well, no. Yes, better oversight might have been nice, but no, the fact is that the crooks who ripped of the federal and state COVID related funding are crooks, they are the bad guys, and the rest of us are victims. So please try to not conflate fraud and corruption any more than you wild blame the victim of a crime for causing the crime to happen.
In other words, don’t be like AI:
(This conversation is edited for brevity. AI is very wordy.)
Question for AI: OK I have an question for AI. I’d like to find examples of corruption of state officials or employees in Minnesota over the last five years.
AI Answers: Over the last five years, several major corruption cases in Minnesota have been uncovered and prosecuted, with the most prominent examples involving widespread fraud in state and federally funded programs like the Feeding Our Future scandal and the Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) fraud, as well as instances of financial mismanagement within state agencies.
Major Fraud and Corruption Cases (since late 2020)
Feeding Our Future Scandal …
Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) Fraud …
Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and Medicaid Fraud …
Question for AI: Hold on a second… Those are examples of FRAUD by private individuals or groups of individuals against the people (against the state), not corruption by state officials.
AI Answers: Cases Involving State Officials/Employees: While many of the large fraud cases involve individuals running non-profits and private companies, several incidents have directly related to state employees and their oversight roles:
In September 2025, the Minnesota DHS Assistant Commissioner of Homelessness & Housing Supports, was fired amidst ongoing investigations into the HSS program fraud, suggesting a lack of proper oversight at a high level.
A performance audit of the Minnesota Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s office … revealed a dozen findings of financial mismanagement, including inaccurate payroll practices, overpayments to employees, and a lack of proper documentation. The Governor’s office stated most issues were resolved, but the findings pointed to internal control deficiencies.
A specific example of negligence highlighted was the continued flow of state grants to a nonprofit whose board chair had previously been charged with stealing $9 million from another Medicaid program.
Question for AI: OK, so those are not examples of corruption by employees of the government. One could argue that lack of sufficient oversight is a problem, but that is a little like blaming a person who got mugged for going out of the house. The other issues here are about ineptitude or bad systems. The technology systems in the Minnesota state government are in some cases pretty bad because of decades of under-funding. But those are not cases of corrupt individuals corruptly carrying out acts of corruption.
I ask again: are there examples of corruption of state officials or employees in Minnesota over the last five years?
AI Answers: there have also been instances of state government employees involved in corruption or financial misconduct that resulted in charges or disciplinary action in the last five years.
A legislative audit covering July 2022 to December 2024 found a dozen instances of financial mismanagement in the offices of [the] Governor: not correctly managing receipts, not accurately overseeing employee timesheet completion and approval, and making several late and sometimes inaccurate payments to vendors, leading to overpayments to some employees…. generally described as non-compliance issues and internal control deficiencies rather than intentional, individual corruption for personal gain...
The Office of the Legislative Auditor has repeatedly warned of poor internal controls at state agencies, particularly within the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), and noted that the MDE ignored numerous complaints about the “Feeding Our Future” program, creating opportunities for fraud.
It is the ongoing nature and magnitude of these issues that led to the creation of new oversight bodies, such as a centralized fraud investigations unit and a House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, to better detect and prevent such occurrences in the future.
Question for AI: Not one of these is an example of corruption by individual state employees or officers. Why do you keep saying that there is corruption in the state government, and mainly refer to fraud (of people outside the government), inefficiencies or blunders, or poorly organized systems (which should be fixed, but are not corruption)?
AI Answers: One documented case, from an October 2024 CNN report reviewing audits, involved a state Department of Public Safety employee who received payments from a recipient of a grant that the employee was responsible for overseeing. The legislative auditor identified this as a targeted conflict-of-interest concern.
Question for AI: OK so there is a report of possible misconduct that could be corruption by CNN. What is the case number in the county, state, or federal criminal justice system in which someone was charged with corruption?
AI Answers: Based on extensive searches, there is no publicly available criminal case number in county, state, or federal court records corresponding to corruption charges against the Minnesota Department of Public Safety employee mentioned in the October 2024 CNN report.
Question for AI: OK, so, really, no actual corruption to speak of.
AI Answers: It appears the most high-profile financial scandals in Minnesota over the last five years have centered on massive fraud by external individuals and organizations who exploited state-administered programs, rather than on state employees or officials being charged with direct, individual corruption (e.g., bribery, kickbacks) with an associated criminal case number.
Question for AI: OK, so this — “It appears the most high-profile financial scandals in Minnesota over the last five years have centered on massive fraud by external individuals and organizations who exploited state-administered programs, rather than on state employees or officials being charged with direct, individual corruption (e.g., bribery, kickbacks) with an associated criminal case number” — is the correct answer to my original question. Thanks!
AI Answers: Yes, This information is correct based on the available search results; there is a lack of evidence of individual state employees or officials being criminally charged with direct corruption in the last five years based on the searches.
NICE debate with Ai which ultimately ceded your original hypothesis!!
Rogue government employees acting on their own is also not corruption, assuming government officials were not deliberately looking the other way.