Minnesota whistleblowers went viral on X over the weekend after accusing Gov. Tim Walz of enabling fraud by retaliating against whistleblowers, and the social media platform suspended their account in a move conservatives suggest may represent another form of retaliation.
“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” the X account posted on Saturday. “Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.”
The whistleblower account claimed that Walz’s appointed leaders had threatened the families of whistleblowers to keep the fraud hidden, and it claimed that “no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud.”
The post came amid increased national attention to the fraudsters who stole hundreds of millions from U.S. taxpayers in the last few years. The office of U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen has charged 78 defendants connected to the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, and 56 of them have pleaded guilty. Last month, conservative journalist Christopher Rufo highlighted how many fraudsters sent cash to the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab.
By Monday, the whistleblower’s X post garnered nearly 37 million views. Suddenly, the entire account disappeared.
Retaliation?
“Certainly it was retaliation, the question is by whom?” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, told The Daily Signal in an interview Monday.
Glahn had been following the fraud stories for years, and he said the X account gave him information that only insiders in the Minnesota bureaucracy would know.
State Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican and chair of the committee on Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, told The Daily Signal that she has spoken with the whistleblowers behind the X account on the phone and in person.
She suggested that “someone went to X and said, ‘They’re not who they say they are,’ which just is not true.”
“I and many of my colleagues went on X and asked Elon Musk and X to reinstate them, because we know they are a legitimate whistleblower account,” Robbins explained. She said the account has been “regarded as legitimate in Minnesota for a long time.”
Rep. Marion Rarick, another Republican on the committee, told The Daily Signal, “I have spoken with them directly, including in person, and yes, verified their identities as current or previous [Department of Human Services] employees.”
The account, @Minnesota_DHS, had a blue check mark and went by the name “Minnesota Department of Human Services Employees,” claiming to represent 480 staff at the department. After X suspended the account, it reemerged as a “commentary account” named “Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary” and claims to represent “over 480 Minnesota State Stewards.”
“The Minnesota Department of Human Services did not take any steps yesterday to have the account suspended,” the department told The Daily Signal.
Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether the governor played any role in the suspension. X also did not respond to a request for comment.
Walz Admin Pushback
The Department of Human Services noted that the whistleblower account “does not represent the views of the agency,” and denied accusations of retaliation.
“Any perception that employees are being discouraged from raising issues, or that efforts are being made to identify those who speak up, is false and runs counter to our values and expectations,” the department told The Daily Signal. “Retaliation of any kind is strictly prohibited.”
The department says it “is fighting fraud in our state day-in and day-out.”
Walz’s office declined to comment for this story, but it directed The Daily Signal to an executive order Walz issued in September and a message he sent to all state government employees.
The order directs state agencies to “intensify efforts to prevent, detect, and combat fraud across Minnesota government programs.”
“We have no tolerance for fraud in the State of Minnesota,” Walz said at the time. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you will be prosecuted and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
The message to government employees highlighted signs of suspicious activity to monitor.
“It is particularly important that supervisors and agency leaders work diligently to build a culture of compliance in our agencies so that employees trust that their concerns are valued and taken seriously,” Walz wrote.
Fraud Should Not Be Partisan
Robbins, who is running for governor in 2026, agreed with whistleblowers in blaming Walz, particularly for allowing agency heads to retaliate against whistleblowers.
“He’s certainly heard about it and allowed his commissioners, his people in these agencies, to continue it,” Robbins said. “He rolled out a very late fraud crackdown in the fall, because there’s so much pressure for him to do something and he has done nothing for seven years.”
“I think these whistleblowers are heroes,” she added. “They have tried to go through the internal channels for flagging things, and they have been ignored, retaliated against.”
The representative credited the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, along with her own fraud committee, which first met in February, for exposing the fraud. She also addressed the Somali community.
“Two things can be true at the same time: Most of the fraud of the people so far indicted and prosecuted has been from the Somali community. Also, some of the best whistleblowers have come from the Somali community,” Robbins said.
“For too long, people were afraid to identify that a lot of the fraud came from the community,” fearful of racism accusations. “That was one of the reasons it was allowed to go on for so long.”
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