MS NOW host calls massive Minnesota fraud scheme 'isolated' in interview with MN attorney general

MS NOW "The Weekend" co-host Jackie Alemany suggested in a question posed to the Attorney General of Minnesota on Saturday that the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme in Minnesota was "isolated," as she argued that President Donald Trump often used such incidents to make generalizations about certain communities.

"He also, in the past, has historically used isolated instances to justify this language of bigotry and paint with extremely broad brushstrokes and make these generalizations. He has honed in on this investigation into Feeding Our Future, which your office actually prosecuted. I'm wondering if you can set the record straight here, and talk a little bit about this investigation and what it entailed, and how isolated it actually was," Alemany asked Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Saturday while discussing President Donald Trump's rhetoric about the fraud scheme in Minnesota, and his attacks against the Somali community in the state.

Prosecutors have labeled the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme in the state as the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, stemming from allegations that the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future and its associates defrauded federal child-nutrition programs for hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19 aid.

As of November 2025, more than 75 individuals have been charged in connection with the scheme, according to federal prosecutors. Nearly all the individuals are part of Minnesota's Somali diaspora, though the ringleader of the scheme is not.

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"Well, it was the U.S. Attorney's office that actually brought the prosecutions," Ellison told MS NOW. "My office contributed and gave evidence and information to advance the prosecution. But I want to say thank you and hats off and congratulations to our colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's office for a job well done. They've prosecuted over 78 of these people."

"We all want to protect the public dollar. We want to prosecute people who engage in fraud. We are up for that. But, we can't do it on a partisan basis. We got to do it together. We can't use incidents like this to score a political point," he said.

The attorney general of Minnesota went on to criticize the president and said he was "inconsistent."

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The New York Times published a sprawling report last month on the extent of the fraud, which has landed Gov. Tim Walz and other state Democrats in hot water as they've sought to explain how such a scheme happened "on their watch."

"Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota's Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars' worth of social services that were never provided," the Times reported.

Conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, which flagged the MS NOW anchor's remarks, wrote, "Contrary to Alemany's claim, the Somali welfare fraud was actually widespread -- just like the liberal media's instinct to cover up hard truths that contradict its woke narrative."

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Trump called the Somali community "garbage" amid the ongoing fraud revelations and has said he doesn't want them in the country, outraging Democrats.

"We can go one way or the other, and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country," he said during a Cabinet meeting last week.