During the House Oversight Committee's second hearing on the Minnesota welfare fraud scandal, Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) torched Minnesota Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and Reverend Mariah Tollgaard, accusing them of downplaying or denying events.
Rep. Crane first addressed AG Ellison, replaying a January interview that CNN's Laura Coates conducted with Ellison, where he described efforts by the state as "enough," adding, "This is a political matter. This is not a serious thing."
While Ellison said that he was referring to the politicized nature of the scandal by Republicans, Rep. Crane noted that his initial wording "adds gasoline to the fire when Americans are so frustrated with this government for their out-of-control spending and the amount of money they pay in taxes, and then to see an estimated $9 billion getting stolen of their taxpayers dollars and being used to fund cars, vacations, homes, and even terrorism."
Ellison insisted he was talking about how the scandal has become a political talking point rather than an issue to solve, but the Arizona congressman not reiterated he was reading the Minnesota AG's quote word-for-word in front of the Committee, but "the reason it is becoming political, sir, is because of statements like that, when confronted by the $9 billion of fraud in your state that you are clearly not doing enough to address."
When addressing Rev. Tollgaard, Crane grilled her on her opening statement, where she suggested the fraud investigation was a "pretext for the terror the federal government has brought to the people of Minnesota."
Calling her statement "absolutely false," Crane explained, "These federal agents were actually brought into the state of Minnesota for a very specific operation to remove illegal alien criminals. It was not because of the fraud that is being handled under a completely different agency."
Rev. Tollgaard argued that the Trump Administration "has linked all of these together," but Crane by accusing Democrats of supporting open border policies that allowed the fraud and countless violent crimes to occur in the first place.
"That is not what this operation was about," Crane commented. "So you are bearing false witness in this hearing today because that is not what that operation was about at all."
