Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are set to testify before a Congressional committee Wednesday morning in a hearing focused on allegations of widespread fraud in Minnesota government programs.

The state leaders are expected to answer questions from the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which ramped up its probe into fraud allegations in Minnesota in recent months after the problem gained national media attention. Fraud eventually served as a pretext for a controversial immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. The hearing can be watched at 8 a.m. central time at tinyurl.com/28fvensb.

Walz and Ellison, both Democrats, have been blamed by legislative and Congressional Republicans for failing to do enough to stop fraud in federally funded programs. Alleged theft in a pandemic-era children’s meal program and state services funded by Medicaid has run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to federal prosecutors.

A former federal prosecutor estimated that Minnesota government fraud could run into the billions since 2018, though Walz and his administration have dismissed that figure as speculative. While there is no hard evidence of fraud topping $9 billion, as former assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson estimated in December, the number still figures into GOP messaging on the issue.

“As fraudsters looted billions of taxpayer dollars from Minnesota’s social programs, state lawmakers recently testified that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison ignored repeated warnings and retaliated against state employees who raised concerns,” Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said in a news release on the hearing. “The American people deserve clear answers about how such widespread fraud was allowed to flourish under their watch.”

Walz’s office previously said it was happy to work with Congress but described the Oversight Committee as having a “track record of holding circus hearings.”

“The governor takes Congress seriously, and his hope is that Congress will take Congress seriously,” a spokesperson said Tuesday.

The governor has responded to allegations of mismanagement by pointing to his efforts to audit programs, the appointment of a top anti-fraud official and the shuttering of a housing program beset by fraud after several providers were charged in federal fraud cases.

Still, Walz ended his campaign for a third term on Jan. 5 as scrutiny mounted on his record of managing fraud. The same week he suspended his campaign, three GOP state lawmakers testified before the Oversight Committee in the first of its hearings on Minnesota fraud.

The attorney general’s office, meanwhile, has pointed to its record of prosecuting Medicaid fraud, noting that it had tackled over 300 cases and “won over $80 million in recoveries” for the state. Ellison planned to discuss that record at Wednesday’s hearing, as well as the politicization of fraud, according to a statement from office spokesman Brian Evans.

“Ellison will make the case that turning fraud into a partisan political issue will do nothing to actually help protect Minnesotans’ tax dollars, and he will encourage members of the committee to set partisan politics aside and work across party lines to fight fraud and protect Medicaid,” he continued.

Republican members of Congress have called Walz and Ellison to testify at separate hearings in the last year. Walz in June testified before the House Oversight Committee, where he and other Democratic governors defended their state’s policies on cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Ellison, Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell and GOP lawmakers testified at a U.S. Senate hearing in February on the federal government’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.

Walz, Ellison and GOP lawmakers aren’t the only Minnesota officials the committee has summoned in recent months. House Oversight Republicans also have sought interviews with leaders at state departments with fraud problems.

Former Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead, who resigned in January 2025 before new fraud prosecutions came to light, received a letter from Comer in December requesting an in-person transcribed interview.

A similar letter went to Eric Grumdahl, the former assistant commissioner of Homelessness and Housing Supports at DHS, who left his job before federal prosecutors announced fraud charges in the state’s Medicaid-funded housing stabilization services program.

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