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Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Justice Department will dispatch additional federal prosecutors to Minnesota due to an expanding fraud investigation related to operations run by Somali nonprofits.
“The Department of Justice is dispatching a team of prosecutors to Minnesota to reinforce our U.S. Attorney’s Office and put the perpetrators of this widespread fraud behind bars,” Bondi told Fox News on Wednesday.
Bondi vowed “severe consequences in Minnesota” and added that her department stands “ready to deploy to any other state where similar fraud schemes are robbing American taxpayers.”
A DOJ official informed Fox News that the department is planning to allocate similar prosecutorial resources in other states.
Remarks by Attorney General Pam Bondi, first reported by the New York Post, come as the Justice Department continues a wide-ranging welfare fraud investigation that began under former Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In 2022, Garland announced the first round of indictments in what prosecutors described as a $250 million fraud scheme involving the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which authorities said exploited federally funded child nutrition programs. Garland characterized the case at the time as the largest pandemic-related relief fraud uncovered to date.
The Department of Justice under Bondi has continued to investigate and prosecute individuals connected to Feeding Our Future, as well as related cases involving alleged juror bribery and health care fraud. Bondi has said the scope of the fraud is larger than previously understood and that additional criminal charges are expected, supported by an expanded team of prosecutors assigned to the department’s Minnesota office.
To date, the Justice Department has charged 98 people in fraud-related cases in Minnesota and secured 64 convictions, according to officials. Court records show that a majority of those charged are of Somali descent.
The Trump administration — including the White House, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security — has increased its focus on immigration enforcement within Minnesota’s Somali community, which numbers about 100,000 people.
Administration officials have cited fraud and national security concerns, while critics argue that only a small portion of the community has been implicated and accuse President Donald Trump of advancing a policy they describe as discriminatory toward Somali Americans.
This month, the Health and Human Services Department announced a freeze on billions of dollars in federal funding for childcare programs and various social services across five Democrat-led states, including Minnesota, as it investigates how taxpayer dollars are being used, Fox noted.
A viral video posted in December by YouTube creator Nick Shirley drew renewed attention to allegations of fraud in Minnesota.
The video, which shows Shirley visiting several Somali-run daycare centers and reporting that they were closed, has received millions of views across social media platforms.
Some of the daycare centers referenced in the video have since disputed the claims implied by Shirley’s footage, stating that they have not engaged in fraudulent activity.
Earlier this week, Bondi confirmed that the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into what she described as a decade-long “lawfare conspiracy” orchestrated during the Obama-Biden era to protect Democrats from accountability while targeting President Donald Trump and his supporters.
In written responses to Just the News, Bondi said prosecutors and federal agents are actively investigating the “weaponization of government” dating back to the 2016 Russia-collusion hoax and extending through subsequent election cycles.
She characterized the probe as an ongoing conspiracy—a legal framing that allows investigators to pursue charges beyond normal statutes of limitation by treating each act of political targeting as part of a continuing criminal enterprise.
“At my direction, our U.S. Attorneys and federal agents are actively investigating instances of government weaponization nationwide,” Bondi said. “This is a ten-year stain on the country committed by high-ranking officials against the American people. Under President Trump, we are fixing the damage and delivering justice.”
