SIO506: Minnesota Fraud and the Death of Information

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:13 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 506. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:18 Lydia: Hello, doing well. How are you?

0:00:20 Thomas: You're a fraud. I just found more fraud right there. Lydia Smith, fraudster.

0:00:26 Lydia: What do you know about me?

0:00:27 Thomas: I know you're a fraud.

0:00:29 Lydia: Apparently.

0:00:29 Thomas: I know all I need to know. How much money have you collected from Medicare?

0:00:34 Lydia: Zero?

0:00:35 Thomas: Nine billion dollars.

0:00:38 Lydia: Wow, okay, where is it?

0:00:38 Thomas: Yep. I don't know.

0:00:41 Lydia: I'll take that.

0:00:41 Thomas: The cool thing is I can just say that. So you're in California and California has a lot of Medicare money and someone's committed fraud somewhere. So as far as I'm concerned, all of that money is possibly fraud.

0:00:51 Lydia: It's you. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

0:00:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:00:56 Lydia: Well, checks out.

0:00:57 Thomas: Sound science.

0:00:58 Lydia: Take me away.

0:00:59 Thomas: Okay. So this is going to be a really, really, difficult one because I have been, as I've said in the last episode, obsessing over this Minnesota fraud stuff. If I were to try to do a comprehensive thing about everything going on here, it's going to take me weeks and many episodes. I've cut myself off, sort of, and I'm going to try to distill some stuff. It's like, it's so vast. And I'll also tell you, nothing has made me more depressed about the state of our information environment than trying to look This stuff up. This in particular, I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. You can't get search results from anything other than right -wing people on this.

0:01:38 Lydia: Oh, God, they just ruined, yeah

0:01:39 Thomas: Normally we're like, oh yeah, it is, you know, the first few are bad, but you can find it. It's also such a unique, weird subject that the limited amount of work that's been done by people like the New York Times. I mean, it's fine, I guess, but like the claims are so crazy and there's so much there's So many of them going on. There isn't one source that's a big name that somebody would trust that's put together anything like, OK, here's what the fuck is happening and why a bunch of people are full of shit. I mean, there's stuff. But if I look, I mean every search I did for this episode, every single one pretty much was useless.

0:02:16 Thomas: I mean I'm telling you I would search like, OK, what about this particular thing? How much like if you just search like how much money was lost in fraud? There's no results that are anybody other than right wing sources. I'm really nervous about this. Like I'm actually I don't know what's happening. I'm hoping this is somewhat unique, given that it's like a state issue that, you know, maybe it's hard for major media to be like all up in its business, you know, and also the main paper is paywalled.

0:02:45 Thomas: So the Minnesota Star Tribune is paywalled. And that one, I don't know how good it is. I don'T I think it's OK. You told me that's owned by a conservative, right?

0:02:51 Lydia: Yeah, owned by a conservative, but I don't necessarily know how much that's trickled down he has said he wants it to be a little more right but again I don't

0:02:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's been OK, but also I can't read any of them because like I've like, gosh, do I sign up for this newspaper? Paper and then you told me it was right when guys like I couldn't decide I decided to do the work without it but that probably would be like one of the main sources if anyone just any random person wanted to search this and it's paywalled so unless you have a subscription to that you're not reading about it and that's like probably your best largest chance of getting facts maybe on This, like, maybe so, anyway, point is I've tracked down a lot of stuff it's also really nebulous like the things that Republicans are throwing around now are nebalous and weird they've successfully created the idea that this is a Tim Walls scandal.

0:03:39 Thomas: But if you were to try to answer like, well, why? I don't even know. Oh, because there's fraud in Minnesota and he's the Minnesota guy. It's like that. That's, I mean, yeah, that's really interesting. I wish I knew exactly why that was. Point is, I'm going to try To distill some key things. And really, the point of the duo of episodes I was doing was a tale of two hearings. I want to highlight some differences in the the seriousness of these hearings. So I'm going to do my best to just stick to that. But there were three, four fucking hearings that I've watched. I'm gonna pick the one with Nick Shirley because it's the shortest. And because I think it most directly highlights that contrast of like, okay, who's our whistleblower, which we went over last episode. And who's their, you know, quote unquote, whistleblauer.

0:03:48 Lydia: I mean, they were so successful he withdrew his candidacy for Governor, right? And who's theirs? Yeah

0:04:30 Thomas: And it's this fucking dingus. God, this guy is dumb. It's just some kid. It's so fucking stupid. But mixed in, here's what makes this so difficult. Mixed in is genuine, terrible amounts of fraud in Minnesota. It was actually real and it's bad. And man, here's another thing. I haven't even gotten to the first break yet, but I'm just like wanting to unload on Lydia's my emotional support and you guys, my emotional support for this thing I've been obsessing over.

0:04:35 Lydia: Yeah, he's 23 yeah

0:04:59 Thomas: Normally in times past, what you might be able to do is you'd see some idiots making a bunch of bad claims and you'd see people on the left making their claims. And if you want to try to verify, you could go to the Department of Justice and you could look at the actual indictments. Now you can't.

0:04:55 Lydia: Yeah exactly

0:05:17 Thomas: I know we've known this is true, but this was a particularly bad example, like a visceral example for me, that the information environment on this is ruined. It is so hard to get any facts on this. And the claims that were made by a particular attorney, a Minnesota -like federal attorney guy. They were insane. And once that's out there, then everybody can just cite that. And there's not really a better source. And the people who are trying to tell the truth, for the most part, Tim Walz is a politician. He's told a few fibs.

0:05:12 Lydia: Yeah yeah oh yeah

0:05:48 Thomas: You know, it hasn't been anything that crazy, but you can't just take everything he's saying as gospel. The people who are try to be reasonable are modest in what they're claiming. And so like they're mostly not saying anything. And everybody, I think because they just can tell this is a bad issue. Like Like fraud is just bad. Nobody wants to be on the other side of fraud.

0:06:06 Thomas: They don't want to be like, no, I'm good with fraud. So everybody's going out of their way to be like fraud is fraud. Any dollar fraud is bad. Like there's that and nobody wants to downplay it. And in many ways they shouldn't downplay it because it is pretty massive in several key cases here. But it's also ways in which it's blown out of proportion, ways in Which it's skewed to not make any sense. And then of course, there's the horrible anti -Somali racism going on. Like that's a big part of it. But while it's also true that the fraudsters were disproportionately Somali and those fraudsters were using race to get away with it. It's unclear like how successful that was, but they very much weaponized their race in order to try to get people to look the other way.

0:06:50 Thomas: And that's obviously fucking terrible for everybody. Yeah. And the whole thing is just, it's a mess. So here I have talked for several minutes without even going to our first break, just trying to lay the foundation because this is overwhelming. Overwhelming I'm so tempted to try to do a big series on it I just don't know how I'm the person to do it I'm nowhere near minnesota you know there's probably going to be some minnesota specific stuff that I just Don't really know and but it's so fascinating and I just can't find the right information out there I really can't I mean I think the left is not quite dealing with this well because like if you're of the opinion that oh actually this was a non -issue then that's also wrong it is true there's a big problem with fraud and in particular disproportionately Unfortunately, there's a lot of fraud within the Somali community there. But, you know, there is plenty of context around, like, obviously white people will be overwhelmingly stealing way more money all the time. But it is true. And I think people on the left have tried to dismiss that as just a racist attack. And obviously it's racially motivated and is racist. But also it is truth that the Somalian community has some criminals in it that were doing this that is making it really obviously shitty

0:06:53 Lydia: That's too bad yeah right yeah

0:07:54 Thomas: For the whole community. Like, it's awful. So it's a lot to filter through. True. I think there's a reason Waltz is giving up his bid for governor. But I'm not. I mean, could it be that he's considering a presidential run and that's why he's doing it? I actually don't know.

0:08:08 Lydia: I don't know my understanding was this all really seemed to impact his family. But I could be wrong because he did say he's always committed to serving the public. He'll find another way to do that. It's just not going to be with the governorship. So, yeah, that could be kind of flagging that he's thinking presidential. But, I don't know, this seemed to really upset him from what little I've seen. So not sure.

0:08:31 Thomas: Well, we'll take our first break. Please support patreon.com/seriouspod. This investigation is proof that we need people who are actually going to look for facts. And it was impossible to find it. God, I'd even say I got to the point where I was trying to Google like fact check sites and there's like nothing. First off, I can't even tell how much they're still operating, like PolitiFact and all that.

0:08:50 Thomas: They had some stuff, but then there was also fake results. There was one, I wanted to fact check like some of the claims or even the number, like the fraud dollar number. One of the results, one of the top results was some news organization that I don't know. And if I don'T know, then most people just looking it up, don't KNOW. And it just said like fact checking the claims on the blah, blah, blah. And I click on it and it's not a fact check. The title of the page was fact checking the claims on the Minnesota fraud. And then all it did was just repeat the claims.

0:09:19 Thomas: That's the first time I've seen that. That's a new one on me where some bullshit website was using the language of a fact check to be like fact check. And Then it just said like, this guy claims it's $9 billion. And it also could be $18 billion. There was no checking of facts in it. It literally just echoed the claims and It's like, fucking Jesus. Like it's, this was disturbing. I'm disturbing. I'm disturbed by doing this research. Anyway, point is, if you'd like to support what we're doing, patreon .com slash seriouspod. Let's take a break and then get further into it.

0:10:03 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:10:03 Thomas: Let's just start this hearing. And fortunately, I can very quickly get into it on a particular claim. Keep that last hearing in mind and what we talked about and how factual it all was and how important it all was and everything you heard about the last one let's go to this asshole so this one is actually in the house judiciary committee the other ones that I've watched with tim walsh and keith ellison those those are in house oversight and so I've gotten plenty of that asshole too the guy does that this one was actually chaired by jim jordan but he's not the one leading I don't know if he's gone I think he comes in at a certain point

0:10:38 Lydia: He must have had a conflict he couldn't do. Yeah Yeah.

0:10:40 Thomas: Yeah he had some sort of conflict so they have this other guy who I believe is Andy Biggs but the nameplates aren't visible to me so I think that's who it is. Let's just hear him start here. He's going to recognize himself for an open statement as they do.

0:10:51 Clip: Thank you. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Today's hearing will examine the widespread and outrageous amount of fraud taking place in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minnesota has lost billions of dollars in state administered and federally funded programs due to organized fraud. Fraud networks operating in Minnesota dating back more than a decade have submitted over nine billion dollars, that's a billion with b in false claims. It isn't isolated. The magnitude cannot be overstated.

0:11:06 Lydia: Billions? What?

0:11:19 Thomas: So right off the bat, we're starting nine billion.

0:11:22 Lydia: Yeah, I don't know about that.

0:11:25 Thomas: So would you like to know the stupid fucking origin of the nine billion claim?

0:11:30 Lydia: Yes, please.

0:11:31 Thomas: It is true that the Feeding Our Future, if you've heard that name, that is a uniquely large fraud. It is quite large. It's bad. It'S bad what they did. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty million dollars. Yeah, it's really bad. That?

0:11:44 Lydia: Over what period of time?

0:11:46 Thomas: It's mostly from COVID. It's mostly pandemic era. And it's not worth tracking down exactly. But most of it was like 2020 through 2022. And then it still had a little bit but like pretty quickly, they started to go after them in 2022. Contrary to what every single Republican will say, but that's a lot of money. 250 million, a lot OF money. And that does seem to be the fraudulent numbers too. That's not like sometimes they do the trick of like, oh, that's the total billing, but how much was fraud, but that amount do believe that's like actual fraud. And let's just Grant them that. I'm not trying to nickel and dime on like the fraud. It is a lot of fraud. That is a really bad case. Really bad. They're going to recover some amount of that. It's not going to be a hundred percent by any means. What I'm seeing is they've already recovered. And I say already, it's been a few years that they've been doing this. They've recovered 75 million.

0:12:33 Thomas: And that just means they're seizing assets and doing everything. But they point out that even if you seize as much as you can, there's going to be stuff like depreciation and there's certain assets where they can't get that money back kind of thing. But will they get half of it back? Back? Probably. I think they'd probably get half of it back.

0:12:47 Thomas: You know, that'd be like a safe estimate, maybe a hundred million. It's not as though that's all just gone forever. That's a complicated process though, where that actually goes and how that works, but okay. Let's say it's 250. Don't worry that we're going to get some of that back. We'll just say 250. And then there was another, oh my God, Jesus Christ.

0:13:01 Lydia: One Kristi Noem advertisement campaign. Yeah 220 mil.

0:13:07 Thomas: That was that how much that was? Oh my God. I can't tell you the amount of ink and bluster and Republican pearl clutching that has gone on over this Minnesota fraud that's 250 million. And then there's another case you could, you could comfortably say like 300 million is roughly what we've got right now. The amount of time and energy. What you just said, I might start crying because so much has been put into to this. And then in two seconds, you're like, oh yeah, the amount that she spent on meaningless fucking commercials.

0:13:36 Lydia: Filming

0:13:48 Thomas: She just did that. Like, what are we doing here?

0:13:50 Lydia: Herself riding a horse yeah

0:13:52 Thomas: What are we doing here, but yet this is effective. Like we got to talk about it, but it's bullshit. It's so bad. God, unbelievable. So where are we getting 9 billion? Oh my God. The origins of this are so dumb. It's going to be hard to even say, because this isn't just, oh, that's the one time he said 9 billion. They all use that number constantly, constantly. And then they get to 18 sometimes.

0:14:04 Lydia: Yes tell me of course of course they do what

0:14:22 Thomas: Those would be like, might be 18. Trump said like, ah, it might be18.

0:14:24 Lydia: Oh my god needs a biglier number

0:14:27 Thomas: It is because there was a half involved somewhere. So then once there was half, I think he said, oh yeah, he got to Dublin. Yeah.

0:14:31 Lydia: Oh then he got to double it yeah it's

0:14:36 Thomas: So there is this US attorney, first assistant US attorney Joe Thompson in Minnesota.

0:14:42 Thomas: Now he is no longer there. He had the job for about two minutes, six months or something, and then left. And no one actually knows why, but it could be because the ICE stuff, there was like, it was more in timing with like the ICE murders and the investigation -y stuff, like whatever that was. Could be this, could be something else. Who knows? He's already gone. But in a press conference in December, God, I almost wish you could see this. He looks high as fuck, but It could also be that like, It's possible. And as someone who suffers from this somewhat it's possible he's very nervous and took something to be okay doing a presentation in which case I get it man I get him but he looks weird like he's like smiling weirdly and like his eyes are I don't know what's going on with him he does a podium clutch the whole time which suggests maybe he is nervous and maybe it is a nerves thing sure whatever if it's a nervous thing I get it I'd be nervous too but you're also lying and making up a bunch of shit so I don'T have like that much sympathy for you like if your panic is because of that then like I think it's fair to make fun of as someone who suffers from panic attacks no I'm just kidding but um it's a weird press conference it's eerie watching him because like I said it's just this like vague

0:15:50 Thomas: Smile the whole time let's look at this so in this he's kind of announcing like there's a few more indictments but this is like a 40 minute press conference and it should not be he just weirdly smilingly kind of talks about stuff I'm gonna start playing here I think this should be a good place I'd argue it could be overstated. I would say if you, if you overstate it, then it would be overstrated would be the main way you could do that.

0:16:10 Lydia: A hmm yeah proceeds to overstate magnitude yeah

0:16:16 Clip: We see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes, it's a staggering industrial scale fraud. It's swamping Minnesota and calling into question everything we know about our

0:16:34 Thomas: I don't know how many lakes there are anymore. They say a thousand lakes. Maybe there's only 500 lakes. Yeah. Everything we know about our state. I don'T know if you guys have that weird accent still.

0:16:39 Lydia: Yeah he's a bit dramatic yeah

0:16:44 Thomas: I'm questioning that. Maybe that's fake. Maybe that was fraud. Maybe the way they talk is fraud. They might've been making that up the whole time. Sorry. Okay.

0:16:50 Clip: State I spoke in the fall about the iceberg I saw ahead something's fraud that's much larger than what's been visible to the public when I said that it wasn't hyperbole or rhetoric it was a warning and today I want to talk and I want to show here a sense of what that iceberg looks like because I think people deserve to know what that is and how big this this problem is because we

0:17:13 Thomas: I love it because he's blending tip of the iceberg with an iceberg that the Titanic's going to hit, which is, those are two different things, right? Because like the tip of the iceberg is just like, oh, that's the only, the little bit you can see. And then icebergs are huge underneath.

0:17:27 Lydia: Notably the titanic did not hit the tip of the iceberg it hit the part of the iceberg that was underneath and unable to

0:17:30 Thomas: Yeah. Does the tip of the iceberg thing, which is to say, oh it just looks small, but that's only a part you can see. Does that come from the Titanic hitting an iceberg or these two different, but convergent iceberg related idioms? I don't know. He's saying it's a tip ofthe iceberg and we're going to hit it, which I don' t, I don t think is normally how that, like, I I think if you're going to hit an iceberg, it's bad. I don't think that hitting it is related to like, oh, and actually it's really much bigger than you thought, too. Like, I think of you hitting an iceberg.

0:17:39 Lydia: See uh -huh Hmm. Mm -hmm.

0:18:02 Thomas: That's bad, the tip of the iceberg is just like it's commonly known that you can only see a little bit of the iceberg and then a bunch is underneath. Right. I don' t know that are those blended, who knows? But anyway.

0:18:13 Clip: We can't solve the problem until we grapple with the size of it.

0:18:16 Thomas: All right. So how big is it? Let's see.

0:18:18 Clip: So the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services pulled the claims data for these 14 programs

0:18:25 Thomas: Already, though, we again, he has a weird look on his face the entire time. But how proud he is of like they pulled data like they polled the the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services pulled the claims data for these 14 programs. Now, they've identified 14 programs they are saying are high risk. And I can't remember if he's saying it or somebody else, who cares? There's so much to go through here, but we'll go with them. They're identified as high risk because of the kinds of services they provide. They might be at an elevated risk for people to rip them off, let's say.

0:18:59 Lydia: Mm -hum.

0:18:59 Thomas: And okay, well, we'll grant that. 14 programs, so let's see how how we're gonna evaluate how much fraud we have going on here

0:19:08 Clip: And those 14 programs in Minnesota have cost $18 billion since 2018, and more than $3 billion.

0:19:14 Lydia: What? Oh, the total. Wait, what? Yeah.

0:19:16 Thomas: So those entire 14 programs just make sure we have this right have cost 18 billion since 2018 that's the total amount of the programs over the course of an arbitrary number of years eight years now but it's okay

0:19:31 Lydia: Over the course of seven, six years. Yeah. Well, I know, but by the time he's making the statement, it was not eight years. Was it?

0:19:41 Thomas: He made this in december 2025 so it's three months ago but yeah okay I don't know why he's picking 2018 maybe Maybe there's some reason he's starting there, but like already, what are we talking? So 18 billion is the total cost of those 14 programs they're saying are higher risk in that time.

0:19:59 Thomas: So that's the 18. So that'S one number. That'S a key number. That'S where we got it. So how are we getting to nine? Let'S see.

0:20:04 Clip: So that's a sense of the magnitude of the problem. And these are the 14 Medicaid programs, which is just a part of Medicaid, these wavered services that have been flagged as having issues with program integrity and fraud.

0:20:12 Thomas: Waivered services. They have a slideshow, a PowerPoint.

0:20:18 Clip: Now, I'm sure everyone is wondering how much of this $18 billion was fraud.

0:20:22 Thomas: Oh yeah, we are. All ears.

0:20:25 Clip: That's not the million-dollar question. Question. The answer is far too much, and the task ahead of all of us is not only figuring out how much of that money was fraud, because we know a significant amount was, but figuring out how to

0:20:37 Lydia: But it's not 18 billion.

0:20:42 Clip: Put an end to the fraud in our state and get control of it. Joe, could you give us a bare

0:20:46 Thomas: That'S interesting. Here I thought we were going to get an amount. Now, I know it's too much, but there are like human beings in Minnesota who use services, right? So there's... Hold on. Unless we're saying, are there no people in Minnesota? Maybe it's been an empty state the whole time. It's just Tim Walz and Keith Ellison and fraud. They're running a fraud state. There's no people. And every person is... What do you mean significant? Like, what is significant?

0:21:15 Lydia: Yeah. Mm -um.

0:21:15 Thomas: If you're talking about significant relative to fraud, you'd say, okay, a significant number relative to fraud would be like five, 6 % would be huge. Maybe it could be as high as 10. That would be really, really, really, bad. But significant in other people's minds might be like, oh shit, that sounds like 80, 90%.

0:21:34 Lydia: No, it's all incredibly obviously so manipulative, right? Because he can't give us an amount, an actual amount, but then he's going to say, but they pulled the data for me. So then we have to assume that he does have the number. Okay. But then the only number that we do get is

0:21:44 Thomas: Yeah. Well, we're going to go on. There's going to be more, the total.

0:21:51 Lydia: The total for 14 programs for eight years.

0:21:55 Thomas: Well Well, it's the only number you have so far. So we get some questions about that.

0:22:01 Clip: Minimum of how much? I think a significant portion.

0:22:09 Thomas: Significant. Now, what's funny is I think there's maybe some good journalists here because they ask like, OK, well, what'S the dollar amount so far that you've done? Like, there's got to be an amount that you 'Ve like done. It's like, okay, well being our future is like, you know, 240, 250 as I've already taken you through. And then there's a big one called Empire Cuisine Market and some other stuff.

0:22:29 Thomas: And that's 50 million. So it's like. All right. So we got to 300 million. Million. How much more is there? Now there's going to be some more. That's what they've charged so far. So there's got to be more. I'm not saying that's the peak of it, but those, I mean, there's not another feeding our future out there. I don't think, I mean that would be hard to believe because that was massive 250 and the next biggest there to get was that 50. And that was, I think several different people. I mean I would be very surprised if there's another that's even tens of millions, honestly, it could be, but like, we'll see.

0:23:00 Lydia: So right now we're We're at about 2 % of the 18 billion. Significant, you know.

0:23:04 Thomas: No we're not there's no way

0:23:05 Lydia: Well, I bet there's 300 million. 300 million of 18 billion? I mean, as long as I put that in right in my Excel, it's 2%.

0:23:11 Thomas: Yeah okay I mean your rounding must be on so it's 1 .67 percent but yeah sure all right yeah that's bad and we have to assume there's more than that

0:23:20 Lydia: Oh, my God. Before you press play, just very quickly, I wrote in Google 18 billion to, like, make sure I was getting the right number of zeros. And it says key context for 18 billion, another context is the potential fraud involving 18 billion in Minnesota spending. So this is AI, you now. I just typed in, literally typed in $18 billion, and AI is like, hey, you might want to know about Minnesota fraud. Yeah, maybe you ruined our Google.

0:23:41 Thomas: Yeah I mean it could be because of me I don't know what yeah so the press conference goes on a bit more and then we might finally get a number we might I finally get a number let's

0:23:57 Clip: How much of it is legitimate? You know, I don't make these generalizations in a hasty way. So when I say a significant amount, I'm talking on the order of half or more, but we'll see.

0:24:10 Lydia: Oh, there we go. Mm.

0:24:11 Clip: When I look at the claims data and the providers, I see more red flags than I see legitimate providers and overwhelmingly so. So more than half of that $18 billion likely represents fraud.

0:24:05 Thomas: See oh half or more okay so it could be more than half why because this guy fucking says so that's why this attorney who's no longer there who uh was was in the position for all of six months he thinks it could behalf why because he sees as many red flags quote as he sees legitimate providers that's the source that all of them are using it is some guy saying half of everything billed from these 14 programs from 2018 to, I guess now, that half of everything is fraud. Can you imagine what that would mean?

0:25:08 Lydia: It's such a wild claim, too, because he started off by being so unwilling to say anything. Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:12 Thomas: Yeah, I don't want to be hasty. Yeah, I don'T want to BE HASTY here, but it's about half.

0:25:17 Lydia: Crazy.

0:25:17 Thomas: That is the factual basis we've tracked down. That's end of story. There's no more to this story. It is him saying, well, I had proudly, Proudly, I had them pull a number for me, which was 14. That's just stupid. He's like so proud of it.

0:25:30 Lydia: Total. He got me the total line item.

0:25:35 Thomas: You don't even call that pulling a number, do you?

0:25:36 Lydia: No.

0:25:36 Thomas: Like, it's like at that point, you're just, I looked at the number. You know what I mean? Like pulling would be like, well, we looked at like everybody who's left -handed who was in the like Southern part of the state, whose name is Bob. And I had to pull that number, but like I had him pull like the total number is not, you're not, that's not a poll as a numbers guy.

0:25:55 Thomas: You're not fuck that. You're just like, Hey, tell me the total.

0:25:59 Lydia: Also, I feel like a number like that is going to be publicly disclosed anyway. So I don't know that anyone had to pull that number for him. I think it's just available on the website because all of that stuff has to be made available.

0:26:11 Thomas: I know. I want to imagine the scene where he went to like the billing people. He's like, I got what might be an impossible question for you. I this is I know this is crazy, but like I'm working on this thing. I barely understand it. But would you be able to pull how much in billing there is from these 14 programs? Instagrams. I know it's a big ask. It's a bigger. Oh, as you already have it right here. OK. You know, who knows?

0:26:34 Lydia: Yeah.

0:26:36 Thomas: But that's the source. And then, as we mentioned earlier, as a tease earlier, Trump and others will say 18 billion. It could be as much as 18 billion as though guys, the fraud could be As much as all of the money.

0:26:44 Lydia: -hmm. Yeah, the total amount,

0:26:52 Thomas: Every time of it there's no just imagine 18 there's nobody that's what I'm saying there's nobody in minnesota that's

0:26:51 Lydia: Man, was fraudulent. There are actually no kids in Minnesota. There Are Zero Children in Minnesota Minnesota, yeah, that's the biggest conspiracy of all time is, like, we've been made to believe that there are children in Minnesota and there actually aren't.

0:27:03 Thomas: Why I'm questioning everything I've ever known about minnesota no there's that basketball team cgi there'sno greek black basketball player who's really good that's made up sounds ridiculous there'snominnesotawild that'swhytheyhavetochokeintheplayoffs every year.

0:27:24 Lydia: Ooh, burn. Burn.

0:27:26 Thomas: If they go too far, the jig will be up. They'll prove that they're not real. Yeah. As much as a hundred percent of the dollars, which is, I guess, technically true. Technically in the worst way, the most misleading possible way. You're right that up to all of it could be fraud. It's true that 19 billion can't be fraud, I Guess. You've got that going for you.

0:27:51 Lydia: Crazy.

0:27:51 Thomas: Oh my God. And so that's the number they're all going to use. They're all gonna use it. But yeah, it's billions, billions. Meanwhile, all we have, again, is around 300. And then like it might go up a bit. There might be a little bit more. We'll see. You know, there's more indictments coming. But, you know, 300 is going to be the bulk of it. I mean, it would be it would go against everything I've read if there's some other gigantic COVID era program, because that's the other thing is it can't just be people now like COVID was a big part of this.

0:28:25 Thomas: And that's the main thing to talk about here. When it comes to this kind of thing, clearly there were some internal control problems with Minnesota. And I've gone through, there's some reports that are done. There's things that should be done better. And we can, we could get into that. I've looked a lot into it. There'S some detailed stuff. Yeah. It seems like they should have tighter controls on some stuff. When it comes to COVID

0:28:46 Lydia: Yeah, I mean, it's important to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, yeah.

0:28:47 Thomas: Taxpayer dollars, yeah, sure. And just basic accounting stuff. There's no reason to not do it. Like you should be, you know, it's not the kind of thing where it's like, oh, it'S a means testing. I don't mean any of that. There'S just like simple controls that you do to prevent fraud that they should be doing, obviously.

0:29:01 Lydia: Mm -him. Right.

0:29:01 Thomas: Obviously. And there's obviously there's something they were doing. There's something they weren't doing. It's a complicated, big 100 page report of one of them. There'S a bunch of reports. And they've also made recommendations and like not all of them have been implemented, blah, blah, there's a bunch OF stuff. But like also a big part of that was COVID. It was that they for one, it was a state of fucking emergency and they ramped up so much dollars. They just wanted to get it out to people. And the philosophy I think on the left is, well, let's, you know, Make sure no one's dying of starvation.

0:29:17 Lydia: Mm -hum. Yeah.

0:29:34 Thomas: And then if there's fraud, I guess we'll track it down. And ideally, that would mean you're recovering the fraud. Or again, if you're arresting and punishing those people, hopefully that dissuades other people from committing fraud. No one on the left is against prosecuting fraudsters. That's not real.

0:29:51 Lydia: Mm -ham.

0:29:52 Thomas: But in terms of priority, I don't care that much about it. It's something that you should do. You should do a good job. I'm sure there's experts who will tell you how to prevent fraud, but it really should not be your main concern.

0:30:06 Lydia: Mm -hem.

0:30:06 Thomas: Your main concern should be, are we providing people the services that they need?

0:30:11 Lydia: Right.

0:30:11 Thomas: And that's where Tim Walz is coming from in his testimony that I listened to. It's like, hey, we rank really high on a lot of these measures. And that's another point he makes. Like, I don't think all of this could be fraud if the actual children we have are doing well. You know what I mean? Like, then how would it be fraud? It's just silly. Point is, though, it seems like it was kind of, you know, combination of bad, I guess, luck. And also, these are old programs. When you talk about Tim Walls, he didn't invent all these programs.

0:30:25 Lydia: Yeah, yeah that's a great point. Mm -heim. Right.

0:30:40 Thomas: I mean, some of it was that COVID money. Some of it Was just because during COVID, the amounts that the federal government is providing are so high. It was the same program, same internal controls that he inherited. But all of a sudden, there's tons of money going through it. And so it's like it's not necessarily designed or prepared to handle this amount of money. And so more fraud was possible in that way.

0:31:02 Lydia: Mm -hand.

0:31:03 Thomas: But it was his philosophy that we got to get people the help they need. And it seems like unfortunately there was a lot of fraud and and to the point where it yeah it's it's it's a bad look obviously it's bad look that there was this much fraud but it's not nine billion dollars and now we've got to talk about our star witness so we've Got Three Witnesses I'm going to talk so we got Nick Shirley I'm gonna talk about I'm not talk about one other and it's that one is really really interesting to me so we could if we're cheating we could listen to Raskin absolutely demolish everything about this, but that's cheating. We can't just get, Jamie Raskins just demolishes this. I mean, when you compare numbers, it's silly to even be talking about it. Again, you already made the point of the commercials.

0:31:18 Lydia: Mm -hard. Mm -h -h. It is cheating

0:31:49 Thomas: Like it's just, there's no reason to be having a hearing, let alone now like three or four hearings about one state in particular. Yeah. And there's nothing to be done. There's no action items here. And to the extent there were or there are, that's something you should be doing for all states. It should just be like, hey, let's have a hearing about fraud. Sure. Have a hearing About fraud. Talk about the controls that you want in place. And, you know, sure, whatever.

0:31:57 Lydia: At the federal level

0:32:15 Thomas: That should be something nobody even watches. It Should be.

0:32:09 Lydia: Yeah yeah no the hearing is like such a grandstanding thing here too because if you want federal oversight on this that's happening at the department level anyway and it doesn't need to be part of a congressional

0:32:21 Thomas: Yeah, it's a joke. And that's the thing. Even to the extent that you want to take them seriously, it'S not even like they're trying to do oversight. They're just trying to, like, get him arrested. They'RE trying to say that Ellison and Walls should be arrested. Like some of them will make the claim like they ought to be indicted.

0:32:34 Lydia: Hearing right yeah right they aided and abetted this fraud

0:32:45 Thomas: Yeah. Like all this stuff. It's a joke. It'S not serious, but let's get to our star witness here.

0:33:02 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:33:03 Thomas: So let's listen to what this infant has to say for some reason about fraud. Contrast this with the seriousness of Schwenk, that attorney from ICE last time, that whistleblower. Let's see what a baby in a suit who I don't know if he's gone to college or not, or he might currently be in college for all I know let's hear what he has to say he starts with awesome

0:33:24 Lydia: Yep oh my god perfect god

0:33:25 Clip: I'm here today to speak on behalf of all hardworking law-buying, taxpaying citizens here inside of the United States. I've helped bring to light widespread fraud that's happening inside our nation and we the people have had enough of our hard-earned money going towards fraudsters as if it's no big deal. As I speak here I want to ask everyone a question. How much do we trust when we pay our taxes it's going to benefit our nation? People erupted during the Boston Tea Party over just a few percentages as they believe they are being taxed without representation.

0:34:05 Clip: My name is Nick Shirley, and I made a 41-minute video that I posted on platforms like X and YouTube. My video received over 100 million views, and it created instant change within our government. As the federal government launched investigations and departments such as Health and Human Services froze over $185 million in childcare funding until businesses can prove they are legitimate businesses. I actually became aware of the fraud that was happening in Minnesota in June of 2025 as I was there for a separate video in Minnesota asking me if I was making a video on the fraud. I said, well, what fraud? And this lady, she was a real estate agent, and she says, well I'm having a hard time selling my properties because people are curious about these assisted livings that are popping up next door or the home health care clinics that are popping up and we don't know who's next to these houses that we're trying to sell and I said well I'm not going to come and make a video if I don't have any proof so therefore I left Minnesota and I continued to look for fraud as in the best way I could

0:34:02 Lydia: Such a joke

0:34:03 Thomas: Okay what

0:35:06 Lydia: Joke yeah

0:35:11 Clip: And as I was getting my own information a man by the name of David reached out to me and he said hey I have been investigating this fraud for years now I have ben driving by these child care centers

0:35:16 Thomas: Man by the name of david thanks for giving me his first

0:35:21 Clip: Is I've never seen a single child and I have received information from the state of Minnesota as to how much money these places are receiving. I said, great, let me come to Minnesota and we'll make this video about potential fraud that was taking place inside of Minnesota. We go to a daycare and I'm instantly surprised by what we see. We arrived and it was an industrialized building and there was two daycares registered at that daycare, at that building. And the first thing I notice is all the windows are blacked out and there's no footprints in the snow of any children. There's no playgrounds or anything.

0:35:31 Lydia: My god his mouth is so wet also

0:35:33 Thomas: Name yeah yeah so I think people have probably heard about this and I will say this if you've only heard the left talk about this then there is a little bit of something important that is missed because okay my god this is 95 % bullshit. But unfortunately, there is one daycare he went to and the sign says quality learning center with the N missing. And he's not making that up.

0:36:24 Thomas: So that's a bad look, obviously. And then that daycare, these guys accidentally got lucky, I guess, on this because they go and they say there's no kids there. And then the guy says, well, yeah, they came before the kids come. Because these are not like all day daycares. Most of the ones he's talking about look after kids I'm imagining after school and so this guy was like yeah ours opens at two if he did come at two there's kids and he came at 11 or something but that one that was quality learning center that one did close down so it's kind of again there might have been something weird going on there

0:36:54 Lydia: Yeah but him calling out that the windows are blacked out is not that's not a gotcha at all

0:37:02 Thomas: That's stupid exactly everything he says is wrong and yet they accidentally I mean he's right about the sign that is actually right that wasn't a lie it is pretty crazy that a daycare had a misspelled typoed sign for that long. You know, that's not great. That's not great. But here's the thing. They did huge victory laps when that shut down. Apparently, somebody uncovered that according to records, they're no longer in operation shortly after this. And it said there's a bunch of violations.

0:37:29 Thomas: Now, here's an important thing, though. For one, there were kids there. There actually were kids there. So everything he's saying about, oh, there's no kids. No, I never see any kids. All of that is wrong. Like, there is fraud here, but possibly in the state, I'm saying broadly. But the thing he's doing is fucking stupid. Like all of those people followed up. And with the exception of a few, like there's a big list. They verified that there are kids at most of them. There are two that were actually shut down, like even when he visited them. So obviously there wouldn't be kids there because they're not operating anymore. So those ones, sure, they weren't like if you ever see like, oh, they were able to verify, I don't know, six out of 10 of them or eight out of ten. And two of them is because they aren't in operation, but there's nothing that I found where there was any, that there was actually zero kids there, which I think is so important because that disproves his entire bullshit. Now, if he coincidentally gets lucky and there's sketchy stuff going on with some of these daycares, that has nothing to do with there not being any kids. Like, how do you evaluate that? You know what I mean?

0:38:11 Lydia: Yeah

0:38:33 Thomas: Like, he went for dumb reasons to do a dumb thing. And because there was a bunch of attention put on these businesses, it seems like one of them closed down. But here's the thing. In the statement, they said, hey, this has been inspected and there have been many violations at this place. Like, it already had been, you know, and they were going to have trouble getting their license renewed.

0:38:33 Lydia: Yeah

0:38:54 Thomas: Here's an article. Minneapolis daycare targeted in Nick Shirley YouTube video is now closed state records show. The center requested closure of its license effective Tuesday. So there have been lots of violations there. Everybody takes the victory up. Ah, he proved it's fraud. It's closed down. There's violations. But they actually said there wasn't any evidence of fraud, though. And that's very different.

0:38:48 Lydia: Yeah yeah

0:39:15 Thomas: And you and I might know something about this. Daycares might have violations all the time. And I think it's easy in this context to be like, oh, there were 11 violations. That means they were total frauds. That could be a big deal or it could kind of not be as big as you might think. It's not great.

0:39:15 Lydia: Oh yeah there are stringent requirements at all levels I mean it's like health and safety and supervision and the way that things are stored. There's so many things over the years. Yeah.

0:39:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. We've gotten notified of at least a handful of violations with our daycares. Right. And that could mean is something as simple as, oh, I saw there was a brief minute there where like you had 12 kids per teacher when there should have been or something like that. You know, like it's that strict.

0:40:02 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Ratio was off because you stepped outside.

0:40:05 Thomas: Yeah. Which, hey, it should be that strict? I would want it to be that strict. It's our fucking kids. I don't think this is a liberal conservative. If I could, I would want the state to be inspecting it every day. Like, obviously, you want your kids to be taken care of by people who are following the rules and doing everything right. Sure. Now, what's practical there? What can the state government handle? Like all that is, again, we're on the side of I'm happy to pay some taxes so all our kids are safe. Like I'm happy to do that. But I think that should put into context having violations. Violations. Actually, here's an interesting thing I saw someone point out. There being no kids is actually the opposite of the problem. The most common violation will probably be that there are too many kids with not enough teachers because there has to be certain ratios for certain ages.

0:40:49 Thomas: You have to have only so many kids or only so Many babies per person per teacher kind of thing. And that's probably the most common thing. And it is actually true that like, hey, if they are shortcutting, if our daycare were shortcutting with that, I'd be pissed, like, because that's that's wrong. They are supposed to have this coverage. Sometimes shit happens and like, oh, fuck, someone called in sick and then like, damn it, there's an inspection that day and we couldn't cover it because the next person up also called in, you know, like shit happens. It's not good, but oh, geez.

0:41:16 Lydia: I think one of the ones that we got was that a kid ran out the door, and so one of the teachers ran out to go get them, and then the ratio was off. Probably. Yeah. So they get written up for everything if there happens to be somebody there.

0:41:30 Thomas: Yeah, honestly, those 11 violations could be like there was 11 poisons in the fit. No, not really. But if it was something incredibly bad, they would shut it down immediately. But that doesn't mean like, oh, that means 11 of their people like beat the kid. That's not what we're talking about. Like the realm of things is like ratio. Who knows? Stuff involving the fucking what? The food prep. I don't know.

0:41:50 Lydia: Like a toy not being sanitized appropriately.

0:41:51 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Like stuff like that. Like it's important, but it's not fraud. I think what happened with this daycare, this is my speculating. They had done millions in terms of reimbursements. But when you look at what that actually means, considering how many staff you do have to have, like you're required by law to have the insurances required by a lot of have a few million dollars in a few years. It's like, not really that much.

0:42:13 Thomas: Like those things cost a lot to operate. Like you're paying a lot in salaries, salaries and benefits. Sure. We see our side of the salaries like, Oh, you might make 60 ,000 in a job, but like the total cost to the company paying that is, is a lot more. Cause you pay that plus the taxes, plus the benefits, plus, you know, and all that is part of the cost. And how many, let's say that gets up to like a hundred thousand, It only takes 10 of that to be a million dollars in a year. And that's just salaries. So like just trying to put into perspective, yeah, for you or I, that's a shitload of money. But like for a business, people are pointing out, oh, they've gotten $1 .9 million in 2025. Yeah, OK. I mean, you got a lot of expenses as a daycare, you know, food, insurance, teachers. It's a lot.

0:42:56 Lydia: Right yeah I mean the amount that we pay for our kids to go to daycare it's like yeah yeah

0:43:00 Thomas: Yeah, we pay $1 ,9 million a year, that's what it feels like.

0:43:02 Lydia: That's not insane amounts of money for them at that point because we're paying a lot too.

0:43:07 Thomas: And so putting that all in perspective, there could have been some shady stuff going on, I guess, but I find it more likely that maybe they were cutting corners. Maybe their ratios were bad. Maybe they're trying to find, who knows, maybe they suck. Maybe they're trying to find a way to milk a little more money. And that is fraud in a way. If you're not paying enough people, you're kind of pocketing some money if you're below the ratio or above it. I'm trying to think above. I guess it would be if you don't have enough teachers and you're supposed to have more, you are saving money that ultimately you could say the business owner is pocketing some amount of money now is it fraud kind of is it fraud where you're like oh my god all 1 .9 million dollars of that is going to a nothing not even fucking close not even close because like honestly if the kids are still getting taken care of then like you could argue that yeah they are kind of in a way stealing if they're cutting corners and saving money but first off that's corporate fucking America every goddamn day we would not want that to happen with our kids and I don't want want that to happen with our kids but like is it fraud is it and is it what does it add up to it's

0:44:09 Lydia: Yeah. I don't know if it's fraud. It's not misrepresenting information about the business or anything like that. I mean, I think it.

0:44:17 Thomas: Corner cutting yeah it's something

0:44:17 Lydia: Yeah. But it's, you know, in violation of health and safety standards. It's in violation. I'm sure like a bunch of different regs.

0:44:25 Thomas: Yeah importantly they have kids there that's the main thing right away exactly if the whole point if you wanted to try to argue that they were making up kids and adding in kids that were imaginary I guess you could I feel like that would have come up when they inspected them that would be so hard to pull off in our day look we can only speak from california but that would be so hard to pull off because in any given day you could have an inspection and that's part of what they're going to do. They're going to fucking check because they have to check that you're accounting for all the kids, you know, because that's like the, yeah. And so the idea that there's going to just be tons of daycares with nobody in them, I find that very hard to believe. Now, Minnesota, maybe they're a little more lax. They don't have as many general controls, I guess, but I don't know about that. To date, I don't think there's been any daycare that's been shown to just be a fake thing.

0:44:27 Lydia: Yeah, they haven't tricked anybody. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. The record keeping is intense. Yeah, a shell company.

0:45:17 Thomas: Yeah. And, and yet that's the entirety of their worldview that led to this video and the entirety of the worldview of the fucking right right now is, yeah, there's buildings everywhere. They're just empty. There's empty. And all they do is build the government. It's all they do. Having said that the feeding our future thing was really bad. And the numbers they reported got crazy. Like they were reporting that they were feeding vastly more kids than they were, but that's a different kind of thing. Like these daycare things are kind of different, you know, like there's, there're not going to be a daycare that doesn't have have people that doesn't get caught like pretty instantly and also they did catch feeding our future to you know like no it happened in 2022 yeah

0:45:51 Lydia: It wasn't Nick Shirley that uncovered that. Yeah the Minnesota government caught on. Yeah, yeah,

0:46:05 Thomas: And so already our star fucking witness is he's he didn't contribute anything other than racism and he's an idiot you can hear him talk he's a fucking moron and that's who they have

0:46:09 Lydia: Yeah. So just very quickly to kind of round out who he is as a person, Mormon out of Utah, graduated from high school in 2020, freaking baby, started doing YouTube videos, doing like pranks when he was 16.

0:46:15 Thomas: Oh for fuck's

0:46:25 Lydia: And then he yeah, and then he took a break from YouTube in 2021 when he went on mission in Chile. And then when he came back, he did exclusive political content.

0:46:25 Thomas: Sake jesus christ that's who they got

0:46:52 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:46:53 Thomas: So I really was trying to keep this to one I tried but as a consolation prize I'll keep it to two I promised I won't go more than two but we're gonna have to take a break here I gotta get more into the actual hearing that I barely even talked about and I'm gonna get into some claims about tim walls and keith ellison I'm going to debunk some key things here I've tried to find the case against them and so far as it exists I gotta tell you about some of this stuff so we're gonna break here and I promise only one more on this right lydia yeah she's got a gun to my head right now I will be at gunpoint only doing one more of this

0:47:23 Lydia: You better.