A recording of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s meeting more than three years ago with a group including eventual defendants in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case has House Republicans renewing calls for transparency at the Attorney General’s office.
During a December 2021 meeting, a group of East African businesses that lost government funding amid suspicion of fraud flexed their political fundraising abilities and asked Ellison to help push back against state agencies standing in their way, audio that recently came to light shows.
The meeting came just a month before the FBI raided Feeding Our Future’s offices in January 2022.
The 54-minute recording is unused evidence from the trial of Aimee Bock, the alleged ringleader of the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, and was first published online this week by the conservative Minnesota think tank the Center of the American Experiment. But the recording was never presented at trial because no state government witnesses ended up testifying.
Aimee Bock, left, who founded and was executive director of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, and her attorney Kenneth Udoibok enter the U.S. District Courthouse in Minneapolis before jury selection Feb. 3, 2025. (Ben Hovland / MPR News)
House Republicans and the think tank have suggested that Ellison’s telling the group he would check into their concerns with state officials conflicted with his duty to represent state government. They also point to later political contributions from an eventual defendant in the case to his campaign.
“The Attorney General must immediately release all public documents and correspondence related to his meetings and conversations with these individuals, and explain to the public why he felt it was necessary or appropriate to meet with them, let alone offer the support of his office,” said House Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey.
Ellison’s office has claimed the attorney general himself was not aware of the ongoing dispute at the time, but that his office had been defending the state against Feeding Our Future in court.
Brian Evans, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the recording showed Ellison acted appropriately during the meeting, despite “the Center for the American Experiment’s best efforts to smear Attorney General Ellison for partisan political reasons.”
“The Attorney General regularly meets with constituents, hears their concerns in good faith, and does his best to help people who need it, which is exactly what the recording of this meeting shows,” he said in a statement. “It is a shame that these fraudsters tried to exploit the Attorney General’s good faith engagement, but they were not successful.”
A little less than a month after the meeting, the FBI raided the offices of Feeding Our Future. Ellison’s office said it never acted on any of the group’s requests from the meeting and has said it has “no intention” of keeping funds contributed by someone tied to the meeting that was charged more than two years after the initial raid.
Federal authorities have charged 70 people in the case since September 2022. As of March, 37 had pleaded guilty, 7, including Bock, were convicted at trial, and two have been acquitted.
December 2021 meeting
In the recording, a group calling itself the Minnesota Minority Business Association pushes on Ellison to help them challenge state officials freezing reimbursements to meal sites, claiming agencies were discriminating against East Africans.
The Minnesota Department of Education attempted to freeze money going to rapidly growing meal sites that were reporting what officials saw as improbable levels of growth under looser rules during the pandemic.
However, in June 2021, a Ramsey County judge found the department in contempt and ordered it to continue providing Feeding Our Future reimbursements for meals — millions of which were never served, according to federal prosecutors.
Ellison spent much of the meeting asking the group questions about their issues, despite his office representing MDE against them.
“This is the first I’m really hearing about it,” Ellison said, telling the group his office has about 400 staff and that he doesn’t check on every single case they receive.
When someone on the recording mentions the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which provided the federal money the state was giving to Feeding Our Future, Ellison asked for an explanation.
“Wait a minute, what is that?” Ellison asks.
At the meeting were soon-to-be federal fraud defendants in the Feeding Our Future case, including Selim Said, who was convicted at trial last month alongside alleged ringleader Bock and owned Safari Restaurant, one of the main meal sites in the case. Also present was Ikram Mohamed, who was indicted in February 2024.
Throughout the recorded conversation, the group repeatedly touted its potential for fundraising and offered financial support to Ellison’s campaign, though Ellison is never heard asking for contributions or engaging in discussion about taking money.
Less than two weeks after the meeting, Ellison received a $2,500 contribution from Gandi Mohamed, the brother of Ikram Mohamed, who was also charged last year, the Center of the American Experiment noted in its online article containing the audio.
Others present at the meeting also made contributions, though they haven’t been charged in the fraud case, according to the article.
Ellison’s office says it has returned contributions tied to other Feeding Our Future fraud defendants, and that his campaign has “has no intention of keeping the funds” from Gandi Mohamed, who was charged in February 2024.
In response to the group’s requests for help with challenging state agencies, Ellison first asked for information on which agencies and administrators were a problem for the group, and in which programs. He also asked for information on which meal provider nonprofits were struggling most so he could bring them to the attention of Education Department officials.
“I’ll call them in my office and demand some explanations,” he said.
Kenneth Udoibok, Bock’s defense attorney at the trial, said the reason they had considered using the recording as evidence during the trial was that it would help show that his client was “as surprised” as some state officials claimed they were by the fraud at Feeding Our Future.
But the recording was never presented at trial because no state government witnesses ended up testifying, Udoibok said.
Following the publication of the audio, House Republicans on Thursday attempted to reintroduce a bill they tried to pass earlier in the session which would open more investigative records at the Attorney General’s office — a move which they argue would boost transparency.
DFLers opposed that bill when it first came up in February, and it failed again in a tied party line vote as Republicans have 67 seats, requiring at least one member of the other party to join. House DFLers say they oppose the bill because it could reveal sensitive investigative data.
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