Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison remains under scrutiny for his past interaction with individuals tied to the Feeding Our Future scheme, a sprawling pandemic-era scam that stole more than $250 million in federal child nutrition funds.
Members of the GOP-led Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee continued to examine Ellison’s entanglement in the Feeding Our Future scandal at a hearing this week, which Ellison skipped.
Four years removed from the scandal’s genesis, Ellison cannot seem to shake lingering questions among critics surrounding his previous meeting with now-convicted Feeding Our Future fraudsters and campaign contributions he accepted from Feeding Our Future associates around the time of that meeting.
Ellison’s 2021 meeting with Feeding Our Future fraudsters still haunts him
On Dec. 11, 2021, a month before the FBI launched large-scale raids on Feeding Our Future’s sites, Ellison admittedly met in his capacity as Minnesota attorney general with a group of self-proclaimed small business owners who turned out to be directly connected to the Feeding Our Future plot.
The widespread conspiracy involved dozens of scammers, primarily of Somali descent, setting up fake food distribution sites across Minnesota and enrolling them as meal providers in a federally funded program that was meant to feed children from low-income households while schools were shut down.
Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit organization, served as the sponsor for these entities, which could only receive reimbursements for the cost of meals supposedly served under the auspices of a sponsoring agency. In exchange, Feeding Our Future took a cut of the child nutrition money as an administrative fee for the sponsorship arrangements.
During the federal prosecution of Feeding Our Future’s ringleader, Aimee Bock, she entered as an exhibit secretly recorded audio of the December 2021 meeting between Ellison and several Feeding Our Future associates.
The 54-minute recording captured Ellison talking with the associates, some of whom were later convicted in connection with the larger Feeding Our Future case.
In the tape, Ikram Yusuf Mohamed, a leader in Feeding Our Future who went on to plead guilty to wire fraud, can be heard introducing Salim Said, another key figure who was convicted alongside Bock on all charges.
Mohamed, identifying themselves both by name, said Said was “a huge contributor to Mayor [Jacob] Frey.” Ellison replied, “I hope he remembers.”
Abshir Omar, a consultant for Feeding Our Future, also named in the conversation, told Ellison that East African business owners in Minnesota have been facing regulatory roadblocks from oversight officials, blaming “racist, xenophobic, [and] Islamophobic” attitudes within the state government.
Omar then stated that they would donate to officeholders who would “protect communities of color” in the business sector.
“We are willing to put our money where our mouths are, in that sense, helping elected officials that are interested in protecting communities of color specifically and creating a business atmosphere that’s fair and equal,” Omar said, “not one where we are targeted arbitrarily and preciously by different departments because of the origin of our nation and our religion.”
Ellison agreed that state agencies were discriminating against East African businesses. “Just getting the inquiry from AG is sometimes enough to make people knock it off,” Ellison said.
As attorney general, Ellison is the chief civil regulator and registrar of charities in Minnesota.
Omar again offered campaign finance assistance.
“The only way we can protect what we have is by inserting ourselves into the political arena, putting our votes where it needs to be, but most importantly, putting our dollars in the right place, and supporting candidates that will fight to protect our interests,” Omar said. “You can only protect our interests when we have your back.”
At various points during Omar’s veiled pitch, Ellison responded, “That’s right,” and “Money is freedom.”
Omar eventually asked Ellison outright for his help, requesting that he step in on behalf of the “targeted” businesses that were fending off inquiries from investigators, should the state try to shut them down. Omar suggested sending Ellison, who was seeking reelection in 2022, campaign cash in return.
“We are jumping into the fight with some serious money, serious organizing, and we need you in this fight with us,” Omar said. “And I know you’re gonna get hit hard, but we are gonna commit to backing you.”
“Of course, I’m here to help,” Ellison assured, adding, “Let’s go fight these people.” However, he clarified, “Let me be clear. I’m not here because I think it’s going to help my reelection.”
Feeding Our Future associates donated to Ellison’s reelection campaign days later
On Dec. 20, 2021, nine days after the meeting, Ellison received a total of $10,000 from four Feeding Our Future associates, as admitted through trial testimony and bank records.
The four Ellison donors, each contributing the maximum allowed, included future Feeding Our Future defendant Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, the brother of Ikram Mohamed, one of the meeting participants. Gandi Mohamed later pled guilty to money laundering for funneling fraud proceeds.
On the day of the donations, Gandi Mohamed and others associated with Feeding Our Future, including suspected and self-identified attendees of the meeting, separately contributed $600 per person, the statutory limit, to Ellison’s son, Jeremiah Ellison, then a Minneapolis city councilman.
SOMALI FUGITIVE FLEEING MINNESOTA FRAUD CHARGES IS AN ILHAN OMAR DONOR
In response to a request for comment, the attorney general’s office pointed the Washington Examiner to an op-ed, published by Ellison after the tape was leaked in 2025, that explains his version of events.
Ellison’s piece in the Minnesota Star Tribune, titled “My meeting before Feeding Our Future raid was routine,” insisted that he was under the impression that those individuals were simply constituents raising concerns about being treated unfairly by state regulators.
“I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things,” Ellison wrote. “I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.”
Calling them “professional scammers,” Ellison said they “tried to run the same persuasion game on me that they had been perfecting for over a year” with state agencies, local media outlets, and the court system.
Ellison maintained he only agreed to look into their concerns but made no concrete promises. “Being the scammers they were, they even suggested that if I helped them, they’d contribute to my campaign,” Ellison said. “I shut that down immediately.”
In an email exchange with the Washington Examiner, a spokesman for Ellison emphasized that he returned all $10,000 he had received.
The returns, notably, came after the recording became public, according to Ellison’s 2025 year-end report to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board.
Ellison no-show at latest state oversight hearing
State oversight committee leaders renewed suspicions this week about Ellison being aware of the fraud allegations against Feeding Our Future when he held the in-person meeting in 2021.
Ellison, who previously appeared in front of the committee, declined to testify at Tuesday’s fraud prevention hearing and sent a letter in his absence.
“I find your invitation confusing,” Ellison told the committee, noting that the Justice Department, not his office, is in charge of the federal Feeding Our Future cases.
“Given this clear delineation of roles, I wonder whether you have invited me to testify on April 21 not about the serious, bipartisan work of fighting fraud, in which my office has a strong track record, but instead to rehash once again a December 2021 meeting I was misled into attending,” Ellison wrote. “I testified about this meeting at your committee last year and answered multiple rounds of your follow-up questions. I testified about it under oath in committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate this year.”
Rep. Robbins invited me to testify about the Feeding Our Future prosecutions. But the USAO is handling those while my office works on the civil side of the case.
It’s alarming the House GOP lead on fraud doesn’t know who is prosecuting MN’s biggest fraud cases.
My response
pic.twitter.com/5mCLefhTm7
— Attorney General Keith Ellison (@AGEllison) April 20, 2026
“He absolutely had responsibility for advising and representing the state of Minnesota,” said Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the committee’s Republican chairwoman. “That he very disrespectfully declined to come and said he had nothing to do with this is unconscionable.”
At the height of Feeding Our Future’s operations, Ellison served as the lead lawyer for the Minnesota Department of Education, the state agency that administered the COVID-19 meal funds, in litigation brought by Feeding Our Future.
Minnesota’s attorney general represents state bodies in legal matters. Ellison’s office was defending MDE in a lawsuit that Feeding Our Future filed over withheld payments.
Regarding whether he had prior knowledge about Feeding Our Future’s suspicious conduct, Ellison wrote in his Star Tribune op-ed, “At the time of this meeting, Feeding Our Future still wasn’t a household name.”
“For quite some time, the lawsuit between Feeding Our Future and MDE looked like a routine dispute between a community organization seeking reimbursement and an agency doing its due diligence … But it wasn’t until a month after this December 2021 meeting that the scandal started to take shape in earnest,” Ellison said.
As for the meeting, Ellison said that “if I had had any way of knowing beforehand who those people were and what they’d done, I never would have agreed to it.”
On the day of the Minneapolis municipal elections in November 2021, Ellison posted a selfie of himself, his son, and others believed to have either attended the meeting the next month or donated to the Ellisons on Dec. 20, 2021, or both. They included meeting attendees Abshir Omar and Mohamed Omar, a friend of the elder Ellison and an imam at the Dar Al-Farooq mosque, one of the scrutinized food distribution sites.
Ellison acknowledged that the meeting itself took place at LifeTime Work’s coworking space, which houses the corporate offices of ThinkTechAct Foundation, a company that misappropriated millions of dollars in child nutrition money. ThinkTechAct’s founder, Mahad Ibrahim, pleaded guilty to defrauding the free food reimbursement system through his feigned nonprofit group as part of the Feeding Our Future network.
A Feeding Our Future informant testified that Dar al Farooq’s food site was operated by Ibrham’s shell company, Mind Foundry, also known as ThinkTechAct.
State oversight committee calls into question Ellison’s timeline of events
Robbins also accused Ellison of making conflicting statements about his level of involvement in the federal investigation into Feeding Our Future. The committee chairwoman argued that if Ellison truly played an integral part in the FBI’s investigation, that would have made him privy to the fraud allegations.
When the DOJ charged the first round of Feeding Our Future coconspirators in September 2022, Ellison’s office issued a press release claiming that the “indictments would not have happened without [the] Attorney General’s involvement” and that he had been “deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable.”
“MDE and Attorney General Ellison’s office brought their suspicions of fraud to the FBI and fully cooperated with the investigation that they jump-started,” the statement said.
But in Ellison’s Star Tribune op-ed, he recalled that in January 2022, one month after his meeting with the Feeding Our Future associates, “[M]y office got our first indication from the FBI of the scale of Feeding Our Future’s illegal conduct.”
“Until then, the FBI had not shared with my staff attorneys anything about the size of their investigation or the individuals they were targeting,” Ellison wrote. “The first federal search warrants were issued that same month.”
Robbins said, “So in 2022, he’s saying they led and brought it forward and they were in charge. And then in April of 2025 [the month of the op-ed’s publication], he said, ‘Oh, we had no idea. We got our first indication in January of 2022 right when the warrants came out.’
“His contradictory statements on this need to be addressed again for the public record,” Robbins said. “And I’m very disappointed that he’s not here to answer these questions.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner following the fraud hearing, Robbins reiterated, “In September of 2022, he took credit for flagging this to the FBI, and that they’re working hand in glove. Then when the recording came out publicly in April of 2025, he said, ‘Well, I didn’t even really know what was going on until after the warrants came out.’ He wants to have it both ways.”
“There’s a whole series of questions that he dodged today,” Robbins told the Washington Examiner.
Ellison’s letter to Robbins in lieu of his attendance at the hearing said, “[A]ttorneys from my office joined MDE in meeting regularly with the FBI.”
However, over the course of their collaboration, the FBI shared “almost no details of its investigation,” he said. “The full cooperation of attorneys from my office in their capacity as MDE’s civil legal counsel was an essential component of the DOJ’s success in holding Feeding Our Future fraudsters criminally accountable.”
“But if you ever get serious about stopping fraud, let me know,” Ellison concluded his letter.
A deadlocked Minnesota House rules panel recently rejected an impeachment resolution against Ellison for “corrupt conduct in office.” The resolution alleged he “made representations implying that political or financial support would be met with favorable treatment or protection,” actions that constitute an “abuse of public office for the benefit of his campaign interests.”
