Dems Damn Themselves With No-Shows at Critical Hearing
Senate Homeland Security Committee members gathered Wednesday to hear testimony from independent journalists Nick Shirley and James O’Keefe on the topic “Exposing Fraud in America.” Democratic lawmakers skipped the session entirely.
That absence didn’t go unnoticed.
Several outlets pointed to social media reaction suggesting the boycott signaled indifference, or worse, complicity, regarding fraud against American taxpayers.
Mainstream coverage told a different story, or rather, told almost no story at all. The San Francisco Chronicle stood alone among left-leaning outlets in acknowledging the hearing happened.
Even then, the Chronicle’s framing was pointed. The outlet described Shirley as someone who “was promoting his brand” during his appearance, and characterized his broader fraud claims as “given without evidence for his claims.”
Inside the hearing room, Shirley painted a portrait of fraud he described as nationwide in scope. “Fraud is so rampant in the United States that I could go to all 50 states and uncover millions of tax dollars being defrauded, wasted and abused,” he told the panel.
His message to lawmakers was blunt: act now. Shirley pressed Congress to “take action and help Americans by taking massive action to protect our tax dollars and end the fraud and to always put Americans first.”
California became his primary case study. Shirley told the committee the state’s Medicaid spending “has doubled from $108 billion to $222 billion while enrollment rose by less than 1%.”
He didn’t stop at the numbers. Shirley told senators “the system is filled with fraudsters,” going on to call California “functionally bankrupt.”
From there, his testimony pivoted from government budgets to ballot boxes. Fraud, he argued, isn’t confined to spending programs — it bleeds into elections too.
To illustrate the point, Shirley recounted a case in which a dog was registered as a voter and cast ballots in two elections. The scheme surfaced only when the animal’s owner came forward voluntarily, hoping to expose the loophole.
O’Keefe’s testimony ran on a parallel track, focused squarely on election integrity. He described an undercover operation his team ran in Los Angeles, capturing 28 separate exchanges on video between his journalists and petition circulators.
Those recordings, according to O’Keefe, showed circulators offering cash or drugs in exchange for signatures on ballot petitions.
O’Keefe used the platform to challenge lawmakers directly, accusing Congress of preaching values it doesn’t enforce. “They campaign in this building [the Capitol] about freedom and protecting democracy, preventing disenfranchisement and how nobody is above the law,” he said.
He closed with a warning about hollow principles. “If those principles are not enforced when they are violated in broad daylight, they are not principles at all,” O’Keefe said. “They are slogans.”
Or maybe they have more important work to do than listening all day to baseless accusations that lead nowhere other than social media clicks. I wouldn't expect MAGA to understand that though.
@NerdyPotato The organization was founded by Aimee Bock in 2016, and repeatedly applied for grants from the state of Minnesota, but was rejected due to allegations of mismanagement and abuses. In July 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) officials identified early signs of fraud, including meal claims they considered implausible. According to former state employees, Bock pressured workers who raised questions within weeks of the organization's first submissions, and officials began documenting her "concerning behavior". Before the pandemic, Feeding Our Future billed the state for approximately $3.4 million. The organization's tax status as a nonprofit was revoked by the IRS in February 2020.
After the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and a large increase in the amount of federal aid available, Feeding Our Future applied to receive funding to provide meals to school children, as schools were closed. Some experienced MDE employees, suspicious of potential fraud, sought to conduct investigation of meal sites. The employees felt that their efforts were stymied by MDE leadership, which they described reluctant to take action for fear of litigation.[8] MDE began giving the organization substantial grants after Feeding Our Future threatened legal action against the state. Katherine Theisen, a senior employee of Minnesota's Office of the Legislative Auditor, later described MDE's response as "a systemic failure."The MDE eventually raised concerns of fraud with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the FBI began investigating in February 2021.
Feeding Our Future's political supporters, including both Democratic and Republican state senators, advocated for the organization to receive funding or passed along constituent concerns that grants were being blocked by MDE. Bock maintained ties with local politicians, including Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey and state senator Omar Fateh. An aide of Frey's, Abdi Salah, ultimately pled guilty to wire fraud; Frey stated he was unaware of Salah's activities. Another supporter was Minneapolis council member Jamal Osman, whose wife operated a Feeding Our Future meal site which received more than $400,000 in funding.
After MDE began delaying responses to Feeding Our Future's grant applications, the organization sued the state in November 2020, arguing that it was being discriminated against "because of race, national origin, color, and religion."In December 2020, MDE denied Feeding Our Future's ongoing grant applications and labeled the organization "severely deficient", leading to an attempt by MDE to terminate the partnership fully. Minnesota judge John Guthmann found in the spring of 2021 that there was no legal basis for stopping payments, and informed MDE that there could be a "real problem" if it did not resume processing Feeding Our Future's grant applications, although he did not formally order MDE to resume giving grants. Several months later, Guthmann held MDE in contempt of court for processing grant applications slowly and ordered the state agency to pay a fine of $47,500 to Feeding Our Future. After the fraud was uncovered, a report by Minnesota's Office of the Legislative Auditor found that the lawsuit had a chilling effect on MDE's oversight functions. Years later, Guthmann and MDE traded statements blaming one another for the resumption of grants to Feeding Our Future.
Federal prosecutors allege that only around 3% of the funding granted to Feeding Our Future meal sites was spent on food, while the remainder was funneled to the individual conspirators involved in the fraud. At its peak, the organization listed 299 "meal sites", which purported to have served 90 million meals in less than 2 years (more than 120,000 meals per day). One site surveilled by the FBI claiming to serve 6,000 meals per day actually averaged around 40 visitors.
Well, how about that, the investigations were started un the administration of Donald Trump. Whouda thunk it
