U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday announced a federal investigation into explosive claims that Minnesota tax dollars were diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab. Bessent asserted the alleged siphoning occurred under the oversight of the Biden Administration and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, demanding urgent scrutiny of the situation.
“At my direction, @USTreasury is investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Bessent posted on X. He credited President Donald Trump‘s leadership for acting swiftly “to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror.”
Bessent added that the Treasury Department “will share our findings as our investigation continues.” Walz’s office, in a statement to Fox News Digital, noted that the Governor had welcomed an investigation last week should a connection be found between Minnesota tax dollars and Al-Shabaab.
The Treasury probe follows a bombshell report last month by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, which exposed a massive web of fraud within Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future, and other organizations. The investigators sought to answer a critical question: “Where did the money go?”
Thorpe and Rufo discovered that members of Minnesota’s Somali community were frequently the perpetrators of the fraud. Federal counterterrorism sources confirmed to them that millions of the stolen funds were sent back to Somalia, ultimately providing cash to Al-Shabaab.
The investigation revealed that the Somali fraud rings used money transfers from Minnesota back to Somalia. Remittances from the Somali diaspora are a major economic factor in the country, with approximately 40% of Somali households receiving funds from abroad. The report noted that in 2023, the diaspora sent $1.7 billion to Somalia, exceeding the Somali government’s budget for that year.
The funds, according to the findings, were funneled to Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked terror organization. Multiple law enforcement sources informed Thorpe and Rufo that millions of dollars were sent from Minnesota’s Somali community through a complex network of money traders known as “hawalas”, eventually reaching the terror group.
Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who served 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, described the sophisticated money network, claiming that cash was routed on commercial flights from the Seattle airport to the hawala networks in Somalia. Kerns told the investigators, “We had sources going into the hawalas to send money. I went down to [Minnesota] and pulled all of their records and, well s—, all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits.”
A confidential source provided a stark assessment to Thorpe and Rufo: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.” This sentiment was echoed by a former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force, who stated, “Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way.”