Minnesota’s political class faces fresh accusations after a recorded December 2021 meeting suggests Attorney General Keith Ellison privately pledged to help Somali groups tied to the Feeding Our Future program and soon after received campaign donations linked to those same networks.
Recent reporting says Governor Tim Walz knew about widespread fraud that drained billions from taxpayers and allegedly punished whistleblowers who exposed it. Those allegations set the stage for scrutiny of other Democratic leaders who are now tied to the same scandal. The story has shifted from administrative failure to potential political favoritism.
Now the focus is on Attorney General Keith Ellison and a private meeting that American Experiment says was recorded in December 2021. The recording reportedly captures Ellison promising assistance to members of the Somali community who were pressing to restore state payments to Feeding Our Future. That meeting and a flurry of donations afterward raise hard questions about timing and intent.
We’ll start with the audio that reportedly shows Ellison promising to help Somali groups in exchange for campaign donations.
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants.
His recorded statements flatly contradict his contemporaneous public statements and raise uncomfortable questions about the intersection between political fundraising and constituent services.
American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal.
As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced. A timeline of relevant events can be found here.
The audio is nearly an hour long, and American Experiment pulls out several timestamps that matter. At 8:59 Ellison is quoted saying he is “in the middle of the battle with the agencies now.” A few moments later he tells the group “[Governor Tim] Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible.”
- At 8:59, Ellison says he is “in the middle of the battle with the agencies now.”
- At 9:07, Ellison says, “[Governor Tim] Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible.”
- At 9:50, Ellison “agrees with the proposition that there is state agency discrimination against East African businesses.”
- At 44:26, Ellison tells the audience, “Of course, I’m here to help.”
- At 45:00, Ellison says, “Let’s go fight these people.”
That December meeting is notable because, according to reporting, on December 20 Ellison received about $10,000 in campaign donations from people connected to Feeding Our Future. Donors named include Gandi Mohamed and relatives of other defendants detailed in the case. Reports also say Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis city council member and the AG’s son, accepted donations the same day from several of the same figures.
Republican Tom Tiffany publicly seized on the recording, arguing it shows a corrupt deal between political operatives and nonprofit networks. He said he would “never let our state fall victim to Third World-style corruption.” That line captured the sharp partisan reaction and reflects a broader Republican alarm about local failures and political protection.
Fox News contributor Paul Mauro has also mapped a timeline that aligns the meeting, the donations, and subsequent pressure to resume payments to Feeding Our Future. His thread walks through dates and filings that Republican critics say point to undue influence and questionable judgment by senior Democrats. The material bolsters the claim that private promises were followed quickly by campaign checks.
Ellison allegedly vowed to pressure state agencies to resume payments to Feeding Our Future, which critics say would have let questionable billings flow back into the system. Those payments are at the center of criminal cases that have already produced indictments and convictions tied to alleged Medicaid and state reimbursement fraud. Public trust takes a hit when enforcement and oversight appear to bend toward political ends.
Additional embeds and timelines have circulated that try to stitch together meetings, court exhibits, and donation records for a clearer chain of events. Multiple independent observers and conservative analysts say the pattern looks like political intervention followed by financial support. If true, the sequence would be a troubling example of how power can be used to shield messy results.
Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, is Minnesota’s highest law enforcement officer. In December of 2021, business leaders in the Twin Cities Somali community met with Ellison in his office in Saint Paul. Bill Glahn, a fellow at the conservative Twin Cities-based Center of the American Experiment and the former deputy commissioner of commerce for Republican governor Tim Pawlenty, obtained and published a recording of the meeting earlier this year. Its contents reveal how different the actual workings of Minnesota’s government are from what the citizens of any fair and generous and functioning society would probably like to believe.
Ellison’s guests were concerned that government moneys for a Minneapolis nonprofit called Feeding Our Future (FOF) might be in jeopardy. In late 2020, the nonprofit had sued the state, claiming the Minnesota Department of Education had been discriminatory in delaying and in many cases denying funding to a Somali-run group affiliated with FOF. Organizations working through FOF claimed to be providing tens of thousands of meals a day as part of a federally funded but state-administered COVID-era food-relief program. With even a little investigative initiative, Ellison’s office could easily have proven that Feeding Our Future was a $250 million fraud against taxpayers. Many of the nonprofits collecting state reimbursements under the FOF umbrella simply didn’t exist, and even those with some basis in physical reality invoiced the state for implausible numbers of meals. By December of 2021, Feeding Our Future had actually won its case in state court, with a judge determining several months earlier that the state had no basis to impede the flow of money to the group. But the ruling didn’t actually require the state to resume all payments. In December, Somali groups and FOF still complained that funding wasn’t coming in quickly enough.
These revelations are still unfolding, and the evidence being circulated will shape the coming political fights. For Republicans, the case is another example of what they call dynamic corruption when officials prioritize optics over accountability. For voters, the key questions are clear: who knew what and when, and was public office used to steer money where oversight should have stopped it?
