Karoline Leavitt Celebrates Tim Walz’s ‘Remarkable Downfall’ When Asked About Possible Criminal Charges

Reagan Reese, the White House Correspondent for the Daily Caller, asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday if Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) could be facing criminal prosecution over allegations of widespread fraud in his state.

“Does the administration believe that Tim Walz potentially dropped out of the governor’s race because he could be under criminal investigation?” Reese asked Leavitt.

“I don’t know if there’s a criminal investigation. If there was, I wouldn’t be able to comment on it from up here, to be honest with you. But I think Tim Walz probably dropped out of the race because he realizes he no longer has the support of the people of his own state, which is a remarkable downfall considering he was the number two on the Democrat Party’s ticket just about a year ago,” replied Leavitt, clearly glad to have been asked the question. Walz, who ran as Kamala Harris’s vice president in 2024, announced he would not seek reelection this week amid the Somali fraud scandal in his state.

“When it comes to Minnesota, the fraud that we have seen—the wide scale of fraud—is really remarkable. It’s egregious. I would encourage every single journalist in this room to go to Minnesota and to cover it yourselves,” Leavitt continued, adding:

As for the Trump administration, we have officials who have been on the ground almost every day. Secretary Noem was there yesterday. Secretary Bessent will be traveling there later this week to talk about the fraud and to do a roundtable on this very topic.

And I would just like to leave you with an update. To date, the Department of Justice has charged 98 total defendants in several Medicaid fraud and related case programs. 64 were convicted, and 85 of the 98 charged were of Somali descent. The DOJ has also issued over 1,700 subpoenas, executed over 130 search warrants, and they have now added more attorneys to their office there to absorb the case flow.

DHS is on the ground, going door to door, conducting large-scale criminal and HSI investigations. They have also sent approximately 2,000 agents to Minneapolis to assist with law enforcement and immigration enforcement. As I said, Secretary Noem was on the ground yesterday.

The Department of Health and Human Services has also begun requiring a justification and photo evidence for all child care-related payments nationwide, and they required Minnesota to conduct a full audit of all childcare centers. They also froze $185 million in funding to Minnesota. And Dr. Oz, who was just here, also notified Governor Walz they’re going to begin auditing Medicaid recipients and deferring payments on claims based on waste, fraud, and abuse.

The Department of Labor is also conducting a targeted review of Minnesota’s unemployment program. The Department of Agriculture is requiring Minnesota to conduct recertification for SNAP recipients. And HUD has launched investigations into the public housing. SBA has also suspended nearly 7,000 borrowers amid suspected fraudulent activity.

So with all of that, rest assured this is an all-hands-on-deck effort from the entire administration to get to the bottom of this and to ensure that the ripping off of taxpayers in the state of Minnesota—and it won’t just be Minnesota, it will be any state across this country where fraud has taken place—and we are protecting law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.