Three Republican members of the Minnesota House are set to testify Wednesday morning before the U.S. House Oversight Committee for a hearing on fraud and misuse of federal funds.

Rep. Kirstin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, the chair of Minnesota’s Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee and a Republican candidate for governor in 2026, as well as Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, and Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, are scheduled to testify. Hudson and Rarick also serve on the state’s fraud committee.

Members of the Republican-majority U.S. House have recently ramped up their probe into government program fraud in Minnesota. Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has issued requests to multiple state officials to testify before the Oversight Committee.

“American taxpayers demand and deserve accountability for the theft of their hard-earned money,” Comer said in a news release ahead of the hearings. “The U.S. Department of Justice is actively investigating, prosecuting, and charging fraudsters who have stolen billions from taxpayers, and Congress has a duty to conduct rigorous oversight of this heist and enact stronger safeguards to prevent fraud in taxpayer-funded programs, as well as strong sanctions to hold offenders accountable.”

Comer said the Oversight Committee will hold future hearings on fraud. He’s invited Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to a February hearing, blaming the top elected officials for not doing enough to address the problem in the state.

Walz, who ended his bid for a third term as governor this week as political pressure on fraud continues to mount, has pointed to recent actions of his administration — such as canceling payments in a fraud-beset housing program, ordering third-party audits and the appointment of a top anti-fraud official — as signs that he is tackling the problem.

Ellison pointed to his office’s work to combat fraud in federally-funded programs, including prosecutions in “over 300 Medicaid fraud cases” where his office “won over $80 million in recoveries.”

“Attorney General Ellison has put fraudsters in prison while defending our tax dollars and the services they pay for,” his office said in a statement. “Attorney General Ellison will review Representative Comer’s invitation and respond at the appropriate time.”

Comer also has asked other state officials to give testimony to the committee. Former Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead, who resigned last January, got a letter from the chairman in December requesting she provide testimony in an in-person transcribed interview on Feb. 6. Comer said the committee will have to “evaluate the use of the compulsory process” if she did not testify voluntarily.

A similar letter went out to Eric Grumdahl, the former assistant commissioner of Homelessness and Housing Supports at DHS, who left his job before federal prosecutors announced fraud charges in the state’s Medicaid-funded housing stabilization services program.

Other officials with DHS and the Minnesota Department of Education also got letters from Comer.

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Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who is leading prosecutions in the $250 million Feeding Our Future children’s meal program fraud case and in Medicaid-funded programs, has estimated fraud in Minnesota could top $9 billion.

Walz and officials in his administration have disputed that number, saying Thompson has presented no evidence to back it up. Walz on Tuesday called that estimate “defamation” of the state.

The hearing starts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday. It can be viewed at oversight.house.gov/hearing.

By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, is seeking to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations.

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The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.

“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”

The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.

A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it would have no comment about the petition.

A spokeman for New Hampshire’s attorney general said it would not comment on pending litigation “other than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”

In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but in the transcript were the word killed in the sentence “you had your husband killed,” the word busted in the sentence “I’m gonna be busted” and the word murder in the sentence “this would have been the perfect murder.”

“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”

Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned because the verdict was tainted by the media attention and due to faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.

They also argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.

Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.

It took until 2024 for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband’s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”

Smart’s trial was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced and that she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been released.

Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry condominium and forced Gregory Smart to his knees in the foyer. As Randall held a knife to the man’s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers served prison sentences and have been released.

The case inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

St. Paul Public Schools board member Jim Vue will resign effective Feb. 17, he announced during the board’s annual meeting Tuesday.

Vue, whose term was to expire in December, has served on the board since 2020. He will continue in his current role, including attending any district board meetings, until Feb. 17.

He said he also will continue his work on the H.M.O.N.G. Project, a district needs assessment project for the Hmong community which the board is expected to conclude by vote at its regular meeting Feb. 17. Vue did not share the reasoning behind his resignation during the Tuesday meeting.

“I am proud of my service on the board and the bonds that I’ve built with St. Paul Public Schools’ community. Please reach out to me if there’s any questions that you may have for me on this matter,” Vue said.

The announcement comes following the board’s December vote to keep a district school focused on Hmong culture and language at its current East Side campuses. Some parents supported a temporary move of some students at Txuj Ci HMong Language and Culture to another location in order to ease overcrowding. The board instead approved a resolution to reexamine current campus spaces, angering some parents.

Vue, who was the sole vote approving the temporary move as recommended by a district workgroup, expressed frustration with the handling of the vote at the time.

“I want my board colleagues to know that the outcome of the Txuj Ci facilities vote is not a measure of the Txuj Ci facilities work group’s worth. It is not a measure of St. Paul Public Schools Hmong community’s work. It will be a measure of our work as a school board to this community, and our ability to represent what they need,” said Vue, who is currently the only Hmong board member, at the Dec. 18 meeting.

Vue won a special election in 2020 to fill the seat of board chairwoman Marny Xiong, who died of COVID-19 in 2020. The board had appointed Vue to occupy the seat until the special election, which saw Vue come out ahead among the six candidates.

He was then reelected in 2021 and previously served as board chair. District committees he has served on include the district’s Financial Advisory Committee, Txuj Ci Lower Work Group, African American Program Work Group and as an alternate on the Council of the Great City Schools.

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As part of their annual meeting, the board also voted Tuesday to appoint board member Uriah Ward as board chair, replacing previous chair Halla Henderson, who will continue to serve as a board member.

Ward thanked Vue for his time on the board.

“You were the first chair that I knew (when) I came on and we got to see how how you ran things and learned a lot from you and I think that you’ve made your mark on this district and that’s something to be really proud of,” Ward said.

Former Michigan kicker Beckham Sunderland committed to the Gophers on Tuesday.

Sunderland was a kickoff specialist for the Wolverines last season, with 44 touchbacks in 71 attempts last season. He did not attempt a field goal. The Newport, Ky., native spend the 2024 season at Texas State, where he made one extra point try.

Sunderland started out as a soccer goalkeeper and was the first homegrown player signing for MLS club FC Cincinnati in 2020 and played for their youth sides, but not the first team.

With last year’s Gophers kicker, Brady Denaburg done, Sunderland will compete with redshirt freshman Daniel Jackson and others for kicking duties next season.

Sunderland is the 10th addition to the Gophers transfer portal class since Friday.

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