New reporting from Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe provides evidence that Minnesota taxpayer dollars are being funneled by Somali immigrants to Al Shabaab, the East African branches of Al Qaeda. Glenn Beck reviews how these scams have worked and what we can do to stop them.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Let me take you to Minnesota now.
I don't want to talk to you about politics. Our elections.
Culture wars. But something far, far more dangerous.
And more fundamental. Because the city journal has uncovered not a fraud scandal. This isn't waste. It's not inefficiency. This is a pipeline directly from your wallet. And this -- what I'm about to tell you, is all based on Ryan Thorpe. And Christopher Rufo's reporting.
That is some of the best reporting, I have seen. And this -- this is -- this is crazy!
The largest single funder. The largest single funder of that pipeline today, from your wallet to a foreign terror group, according to multiple federal sources, is the taxpayer of the state of Minnesota. Let me repeat that. Because it's not a punch line. This is not hyperbole. This is not a claim thrown around on social media. According to federal counterterrorism sources, quoted by the City Journal, quote, the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer. What is Al-Shabaab? In case you don't remember.
It is the east African branch of al-Qaeda. This is the same group that bombs hotels. They slaughter Christians. They massacre schoolchildren. They publicly behead those who defy their authority.
And that, the major funder is you, in Minnesota!
And this is what happens when you mix a naive wide open, no questions asked welfare machine, with a political class, terrified of being called a racist.
And then a police class that's actually in on it, as well.
And then you throw in a media terrified of reporting anything that challenges progressive dogma.
And then a community where Klan networks and overseas loyalties operate underneath the radar of government. Because governments are unwilling to look there!
That is the perfect storm.
That's Minnesota.
And it is drowning inside of that storm.
Now, it started with a program called HSS.
The Housing Stabilization Services. It was launched in 2020 to help people on the margins. The addicts. The elderly. The mentally ill.
Noble idea.
But it was designed with everything a criminal enterprise dreams of! Low barriers to entry. Minimal requirements for reimbursement.
Billions in Medicaid dollars, with almost zero verification!
Now, before the program even started, bureaucrats estimated it might cost $2.6 million a year.
In four years, it went from 2.6 to 21 million.
Then the next year, in court 22 million. The next year 74 million.
To over $100 million every year.
2.6, to over 100!
This year alone, 77 HHS providers have been terminated for credible allegations of fraud. Seventy-seven.
I don't know if you saw this. The acting attorney. US attorney said, quote, the vast majority of this program was fraudulent.
Not over billing. Not paperwork. No mistakes.
Fictitious companies. Empty story fronts. Ghost clients. Stacks of faked claims. Six of the eight defendants indicated that they were members of the Minnesota Somali community, but this is the first ripple.
There was another scheme. The 250-million dollar mega scheme. That came from Feeding Our Future.
Feeding Our Future is a nonprofit that went from $3 million to $200 million in federal food aid dollars, in two years!
Three million to a straight line up to 200 million! To help feed the hungry in Minnesota, in two years. Wow! Fake meal accounts.
Fake attendants. Fake invoices. Dozens of defendants. Primarily, members of Minnesota's Somali community. Some of them bought luxury homes, fancy cars, properties in Kenya and Turkey. And when the state raised any kind of concern, the group sued, claiming racism. And everybody was like, racism.
I don't know what I call that.
The investigators were chastised. The politicians stayed quiet. The media -- by the way, that's government you could have had as vice president right now. Everyone knew the rule. Don't question. You can't criticize, okay? If you want to survive politically, no!
So the cost $250 million stolen, right there, hung on the backs of taxpayers, who believed they were feeding hungry kids.
Now add on to that. So we've got two scandals. Now add on to that, the autism scam.
Days after those indictments, another scheme exploded. Autism services. A Somali woman already tied to feeding our future was charged with leading a 14 million-dollar Medicare fraud ring.
That was invented diagnosis. They bought parents with kickbacks. They created a network of fake autism centers, autism spending. In Minnesota, jumped from 3 million, to 399 million in just a couple of years.
Providers ballooned from 41 providers to 328.
One in 16 Somalia 4-year-olds were suddenly diagnosed. One in every 16 suddenly had autism. That's triple the state average. And nobody was -- nobody is looking into that? What's happening in the Somali community? This wasn't CAIR. This wasn't treatment. This was a racket. And it wasn't isolated.
Let me tell you what the US attorney Joseph Thompson said. He said, these schemes form a web, that has stolen billions of dollars.
So why did nobody ask where that money went.
Where did the money go. Oh. You're not going to like the answer.
Somalia depends on remittances from abroad. $1.7 billion sent to Somalia last year alone. That is more money than the country's entire government budget!
Imagine somebody sending us $6 trillion.
That's what happened in Somalia. Investigators told Chris Rufo and the city journal that welfare recipients in Minnesota, were sending the money overseas.
Called Hawalla money transfer networks. They were moving tens of millions of dollars all the time.
And Al-Shabaab, the terrorist organization, takes a cut of every dollar entering the Somali clan channels. One terrorism task force investigator said, every cent, sent back to Somalia, benefits Al-Shabaab in some way. It's not speculation. It's not theory. It's not conjecture. This is the conclusion of multiple federal investigators, who have spent years tracking the money flow.
They said Minnesota Somali community runs a sophisticated money pipeline, directly from the pockets of US taxpayers, directly to Somalia!
Welfare dollars. Fraudulently obtained. Transferred to Somalia. Al-Shabaab benefits every single time, and here's the part that should terrify everybody. They warn that if one terrorist attack could be traced back to these funds.
The entire country will discover overnight.
That we were financing the very groups sworn to destroy us.
Gang, you're going to find this in Epstein. You're going to find this -- we already did with USA ID. You're going to find this everywhere. The greatest heist of human history, the largest robbery of wealth has been happening right under our noses and we didn't even know the bank turned off the alarms!
All of our wealth being transferred out. Why didn't Minnesota stop this. Why didn't the journalists investigate this?
Why didn't the officials sound the alarm?
Well, here's the reason. If you don't win the Somali community. You don't win Minneapolis. If you don't win Minneapolis, you don't win the state. That's it!
You're going to say anything about it.
Of course not.
Of course, you won't say a damn thing about it.
Ilhan Omar staff. Advocated for the later groups later charged with fraud.
State officials were looking the other way. Democratic leadership, refused audits. Oversight. Even any kind of scrutiny. Because the political cost of calling out fraud, if it occurred inside that Somali community, was considered higher than the cost of losing billions of your dollars. So they let it grow.
They let it metastasize. They let it intertwine with criminal and terrorist networks overseas.
You're just an Islamophobe. It's not about ethnicity. This is about a system that refuses to protect its own citizens. Enough is enough!
Is every Somali Minnesotan responsible? No, that's absurd!
But ignoring the fact that organized fraud rings have emerged inside a specific community, that doesn't have loyalty! Many times, to the United States of America, when nobody would look into it.
The FBI, investigative journalists.
That's not tolerance. It's negligence. It's cowardice.
And it's allowed billions of dollars meant for the poor of our nation. Your hard-earned money. To become an international money laundering system that helps finance the second largest al-Qaeda franchise on planet earth.
This is what happens when ideology replaces oversight. When equity replaces accountability.
When fear of being labeled a racist overrides the responsibility to protect -- to protect taxpayers or safeguard national security!
Minnesota didn't just mismanage welfare programs. It didn't just lose money.
It didn't just fall asleep.
It built through fear and politics and continual. The perfect getaway through which billions of our dollars could pour from American safety net programs, into overseas networks that feed, support, and expand the reach of violent jihadist organizations.
Wow.
I think it was the US attorney that said, it should take your breath away.
It does. It does.
Now, here's the -- here's the thing. I started talking to you today, about the Bubba Effect. You're seeing the Bubba Effect happening now in Dearborn. You have a guy who is wrapping a Koran in bacon, and all kinds of trouble is happening because of it. And I don't know any common sense individual on either side of the aisle, that thinks that's a good idea.
Okay?
But a lot of people including me, at times, is like, look what he's saying though. It's not about the bacon. It's about the Koran. Look at what's he's saying. This is out of control.
And nobody is saying it. At least he's saying it. No, no, no. That's the Bubba Effect.
No! He's wrong in what he's doing. He's not necessarily wrong in what it is highlighting.
But we can't be part of the Bubba Effect.
Let's just highlight the real stuff!
But people get so frustrated, it takes bacon and a Koran to make people pay attention again.
This is not a Minnesota story.
This is not even a story about Somalia. This is a story about USAID. This is a story about Epstein.
All of our money. And this is a story about silence. And fear. And institutional corruption and surrender.
And unless we confront it honestly. Unflinchingly. Immediately. With truth!
We're all going to be poor.
We will all end up being Somalia. Because in the end, every last time that we have, will be taken.
And shipped some place else, and used against us for our own demise.
