To the Editor:

As a member of the Senate Education Committee, I participated in the Senate hearings involving the investigation of the Feeding Our Future (FOF) fraud case in which $250M was stolen from Minnesota taxpayers.

The Commissioner of Education, Heather Mueller, testified her agency was under a court order to pay FOF. Gov. Tim Walz repeated that statement and called to have Judge John Guthmann investigated. Both blamed Judge Guthmann, which is why I suspect the Minnesota Judicial Branch took the very unusual step of releasing a public statement on the case.

But that turned out to be false. Here is a link to the full statement that the Minnesota Judicial Branch released. The following are portions of that statement:

• ”Judge Guthmann never ordered the Department of Education to resume payments to FOF in April 2021, or at any other time.”

• “On February 26, 2022, the Star Tribune reported on a federal investigation of FOF. The article included the following false statement: “In April 2021, Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann told the department it didn’t have the authority to stop payments and ordered the department to resume payments.” The same media sources reported that, in her April 4, 2022, testimony to the Minnesota Senate, the Commissioner of the Education stated that the MN Department of Education tried to stop payments to FOF, only to be ordered by Judge Guthmann to resume payments. 

• That is false.

• Then, when federal indictments were announced this week, many new reports were published. On September 22, 2022, Governor Tim Walz told the media that the Minnesota Department of Education attempted to end payments to FOF because of possible fraud, but that Judge Guthmann ordered payments to continue in April 2021.

• That is also false.” 

The Governor, the Department of Education, and its commissioner are part of the Executive Branch. It was their responsibility for oversight of the grants they approved. When they failed, rather than accepting responsibility, they tried to shift the blame in an effort to conceal their carelessness. This is really serious. Either Gov. Walz and Commissioner Mueller are guilty of making false statements in an attempted coverup of the largest fraud case in Minnesota history or Judge Guthmann and the Judicial Branch are. 

I’d bet Court documents will prove Walz and Mueller got caught in their own web of deceit.

Scott Newman

Minnesota State Senator

District 17