WASHINGTON — Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison knew of billions of dollars in benefit fraud “much earlier than they led the public to believe” — and allowed whistleblowers who flagged it to suffer retaliation, according to a stunning report released Monday.
The Walz administration “retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials and threats of military surveillance,” the report revealed.
More than 30 whistleblowers spoke with the panel to help compile the report — including several who were threatened with “military surveillance” by deputy assistant commissioner Emmanuel Nwala at a behavioral health agency.
“I wanted to reach out to my colleagues that I did intelligence research with in the Army and give them the IP addresses and the email addresses to track specific location but was asked by upper leadership to hold off as they are doing their own thing on it,” Nwala wrote in an undated email.
Both Walz and ex-assistant Department of Human Services commissioner Eric Grundahl said that the attempted military intelligence referral was inappropriate, with the Democratic governor denying knowledge of it.
“[H]e talked about some of his previous experience in the military and being able to leverage some kind of military intelligence to be able to identify who was sending those messages,” Grundahl said...
NeoGenomics Laboratories Inc. (NeoGenomics), located in Florida, has agreed to pay $9,813,260 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by providing below fair market value cons...