GOP accuses Walz allies of burying $52M Medicaid fraud report before election
Minnesota lawmakers battle over delayed Medicaid fraud report
The Minnesota House and Senate are currently arguing over when and how a third‑party audit of the state’s Medicaid program should have been made available to legislators. The audit, conducted by Optum and commissioned by Governor Tim Walz’s administration, identified more than $52 million in improper payments in 14 high‑risk Medicaid services. Republicans say the delay in sharing the full report prevented lawmakers from acting before the 2026 election, while Democrats argue the release was constrained by legal requirements and the need to protect trade secrets.
The audit and its findings
Governor Walz announced the Optum review in October 2025, a month before allegations surfaced that members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora were involved in widespread fraud in the state’s social‑services programs. The audit examined a range of high‑risk services and concluded that “improper payments” had exceeded $52 million, a figure that does not automatically equate to fraud, waste or abuse. In February 2026 the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) released a heavily redacted version of the report to the public, citing the need to shield Optum’s trade secrets and prevent disclosure of sensitive security information that could aid fraudsters.
Republicans demand full access
Minnesota Republican Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth, who is also the GOP gubernatorial nominee, told Fox News Digital that the state’s “fraud has exploded under the Walz administration” and that the governor “has held no one in his entire administration accountable for the level of fraud.” Demuth said the delay denied the House a chance to respond to the report’s findings during the current legislative session before the election, which is 29 days away. “We’re just four weeks out, and you really have to wonder why they are refusing to do this,” she added.
Senator Jordan Rasmusson, a Republican from Minneapolis, echoed Demuth’s concerns. “It’s hard for Democrats, elected Democrats in Minnesota, to admit that we have a fraud problem of this scale and to take accountability for those failings,” he told Fox News Digital. Rasmusson has repeatedly called for the full, unredacted report to be released to lawmakers. He introduced an amendment in April to make the report public, but it failed along party lines. In May a version of his provision was incorporated into a broader budget package that did not require full public disclosure.
Demons in the House
Dawn Gillman, a Republican state representative from St. Paul, said that the delayed release was a disappointment. “I’m grateful that it’s out, but it’s very disappointing we couldn’t have returned to St. Paul to address it,” she told Fox News Digital. She noted that lawmakers will have to wait until January to address the findings.
John Hoffman, a DFL state senator from Minneapolis, counters that the report contains vulnerabilities that should not be made public before they are addressed. “This is a report about vulnerabilities in public programs,” Hoffman said. “Why would we release that to the public before we fixed them? We wouldn’t publish a report about which banks don’t lock their doors, either.” Hoffman added that the gaps and weaknesses highlighted by the report had already been addressed by laws passed earlier that year and that the report was “already outdated.”
Legal framework for release
Minnesota law requires that DHS provide the initial Optum reports to members of any legislative committee with jurisdiction over human‑services policy and finance after a joint request from the committee’s chair and ranking minority member. Under the law, lawmakers can review the report but cannot publicly release non‑public information it contains. The Human Services Finance and Policy Committee’s co‑chair, DFL Rep. Mohamud Noor, and former GOP House co‑chair Joe Schomacker requested the report in May. The Department of Human Services confirmed that the report was finally made available to a select group of lawmakers last week.
“We appreciate legislators’ interest in receiving a copy of the unredacted initial Optum report from February 2026,” Minnesota Department of Human Services Temporary Commissioner John Connolly said in a statement. “In alignment with the law passed by the Legislature last session, the Minnesota Department of Human Services released the Optum reports last week.”
Political context
The Minnesota legislature is currently divided. In the Senate the Democratic‑Farmer‑Labor Party holds a slim 34‑33 majority, while the House is tied 67‑67. Governor Walz ended his re‑election campaign in January 2026 after growing scrutiny of his administration’s handling of alleged fraud in social‑services programs. The audit was a key issue in that debate, and the delayed release of the full report has become a flashpoint for partisan conflict.
As the state prepares for the mid‑term election, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are weighing whether the Optum report’s findings can be acted upon in time. Republicans argue that the delay undermined accountability, while Democrats insist that the report’s release was bound by legal safeguards and that the legislature has already taken steps to address the identified vulnerabilities. The outcome of this dispute may shape the next phase of Minnesota’s Medicaid oversight and the broader conversation about fraud prevention in state‑run programs.