Minnesota Fraud Whistleblowers Hunted, the Fight for the Future of College Athletics & Controversial DA Practices in PA Week In Review

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Welcome, it is verdict with Ted Cruz. We can review Ben Ferguson with you, and happy 4th of July. Here are the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this past week. We have got a shocking story coming out of Minnesota that the governor there actually paid private investigators to spy and to intimidate government employees who had whistleblown on the massive fraud that was taking place. Also, a bill that is actually moving through Congress that is now quite possibly going to save college sports forever. And lastly, an activist DA in Philadelphia, yet again letting criminals walk. Why is this happening and who's behind it? We explain that for you. It's the weekend review, and it starts right now. All right, I want to move on to this other incredible story, Senator, coming out of Minnesota. And in life, especially in government work, you're told that if you're a whistleblower, that you have protections. And that if you're a whistleblower, you should not be afraid for your job or that someone's going to come after you, certainly the government that you work for. Well, apparently that's not the case in Minnesota. And if you want to know how the Somali fraud got so bad, It might actually be because the governor was coming after the whistleblower, not those that were committing the crimes in Minnesota with his new shocking report. Well, that is inevitably, number one, the law, federal law and typically state law that protects whistleblowers that gives you legal protection because you want whistleblowers to call attention to fraud. But number two. If a government official goes after the whistleblowers, attacks the whistleblowers, refuses to follow the law and whistleblowers, that is powerful indication of a guilty mind that you're covering something up. It's sort of like if someone is murdered in Central Park and you catch a person burning their clothes from that night and destroying the murder weapon. Yeah. That is powerful, powerful evidence that they're the murderer, that it is typically the guilty who destroys evidence who tries to cover it up, that if you're not guilty, you have far less motivation, far less likelihood to try to silence whistleblowers to try to destroy evidence. So here's the story that broke in the Daily Caller. The headline is Tim Walz' staff hired private investigators to silence fraud whistleblowers. Committee report fines. Senior Minnesota state officials allegedly hired outside investigators to silence whistleblowers in an attempt to cover up widespread state social services fraud, a House committee report release Monday found. The 200-page staff report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that Democrat Minnesota Governor Tim Walz' state's state's administration intimidated and retaliated against state employees who raised concerns about fraud. soliciting private investigators to reveal employees personal details. Wow. The report titled The Cost of Doing Nothing, how Tim Walz and Keith Ellison fueled Minnesota's fraud explosion, exposed that senior state officials, as high as allegedly Governor Waltz, were aware of widespread fraud for years and neglected to respond to reports.

A Minnesota Department of Education official who contacted the FBI told federal investigators she was pressured, quote, at every turn by her superiors to stop raising fraud concerns and was, quote, handslapped when she continued to investigate, according to the report. The official also reported that she was warned by state administrators to, quote, stop digging into things as it would appear that she was, quote, targeting certain groups. This is DEI and fraud all coming together along with corruption to elect Democrats. The article continues. Dozens of other whistleblowers reported dozens. that they were told to stay silent about fraud concerns by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, because they would be labeled, quote, racist or Islamophobic. DHS also told state employees that raising fraud concerns would harm the state, the report said. Whistleblowers reported that DHS conducted arbitrary investigations to photograph their cars and houses, monitor their phones and computers, and asked employees where their kids attended school. Now, it's going to get worse. Then temporary commissioner, Shereen Gandhi. By the way, I'm going to give you some foreshadowing that Ms. Gandhi did not behave like Gandhi. Instead, she confirmed in a testimony copied in the report that the State Department used outside entities to conduct these investigations of employees, but could not confirm whether independent law firms were used. Gandhi also confirmed in her testimony that DHS management would regularly meet and, quote, check-in on employees who had reported fraud concerns. Gandhi continued to conduct these check-ins on DHS whistleblower Faye Bernstein, quote, a year or two. after her investigatory leave, so they hunted them down and they stayed harassing them. Bernstein alleged that Gandhi, quote, shamed her in a meeting after she raised concerns about fraud and, quote, excluded her from further meetings on the topic. Whistleblowers also alleged that former state commissioner Jody Harpstead held a division-wide meeting and told attendees that, quote, employees would be punished. if they reported concerns about fraud and DHS programs, according to the report. DHS employee Emmanuel Nuala told colleagues that he, quote, did intelligence research within the Army and appears to have threatened to provide IP addresses to former colleagues in order to find the locations of whistleblower's email addresses. an email obtained through a public data request showed. Now, it's about to get even worse. The report also alleged that DHS de-anonymized an internal fraud hotline for employees in an attempt to intimidate fraud reporters. After whistleblowers later created an anonymous external email to report fraud,

DHS blocked the email address. Whistleblowers reported that their fraud hotline tips were sent to human resources and used against them. The hotline was originally anonymous, but was de-anonymized under Gandhi's tenure as deputy commissioner of HR. Governor Waltz appointed Gandhi as Commissioner of DHS in February 2026, but removed her in May before her confirmation hearing amid scrutiny of her response to fraud allegations. This is... Anyone who claims, gosh, the elected officials of Minnesota, they were victims. They didn't know. They wanted to go after the fraud, which, by the way, both Waltz and Ellison keep saying, oh, we wanted to go after the fraud. We wanted to prosecute it. This demonstrates, I think powerfully, they are lying. Not only did they not want to go after the fraud, they were doing everything they could to silence the whistleblowers and prevent anyone from knowing about the fraud. Yeah, and this goes back to the other question of accountability. If everything that we just mentioned turns out to be true, there's obviously now an open investigation into this, if you do these things, are you breaking the law? And if it goes all the way, the governor. Is he breaking the law? And the people below him, are they breaking the law? And is there any accountability for this? Or is this just, well, Walt isn't running for reelection, so it doesn't really matter anymore. And we'll just move on. And, yeah, we may continue to do things like this in the future without accountability. Listen, the Department of Justice has created an entire new division focused at going after fraud. And I hope everyone who made these decisions faces accountability if they committed criminal violations that they are prosecuted. I am hopeful. I can tell you I'm urging the Department of Justice, hold them accountable. The way our constitutional system works, it's not the legislature. Look, I'm in the Senate. I can't prosecute anybody. I don't have executive authority. I have legislative authority. I can. Right legislation, which I have, but I can't. The power to bring an indictment, the power to go before a grand jury to get an indictment to prosecute that is exclusively within the executive branch, within principally the U.S. Department of Justice at the federal level. And so I can tell you this. I am urging the Attorney General and DOJ prosecute every single person who committed criminal acts who covered up. this fraud who benefited from it, who knew what they were doing, and this is a real smoking gun. And at the AG, I go back to Ellison there, we know his name well. If he's involved in this and is using and weaponizing the government to go after those that were not committing the fraud, those that were trying to whistleblow on the fraud, and they are harassed, is there any lane for the people that were being harassed to somehow have, like,

you know, restitution for what they went through. If you're being harassed for two years after you put in a tip, that's got to put a lot of stress on your life. I'm assuming it puts stress in your career. I'm assuming it could have affected a lot of people getting promotions that they deserved. Yeah, look, and I would assume we're going to see civil litigation of people filing lawsuits and seeking compensation for this. And that litigation could well be successful. In terms of criminal prosecution, this would not surprise me. I don't know sitting here if Minnesota law makes doing this a criminal violation in Minnesota. Of course, the federal government can't prosecute violations of Minnesota law. It would take a Minnesota district attorney to bring that case. And I got to admit, I'm very skeptical that there are any prosecutors in Minnesota willing to hold the corrupt Democrats in charge of that state accountable. If they're not, then there's not really a mechanism to enforce Minnesota law, which means you would be left with federal law. And given that these are federal funds that were effectively being stolen and funneled to Somali, funneled to Somali and fraudsters being sent among other places to al-Shabaab. And we had terrorists before on this podcast that the single largest funder of al-Shabaab. which is the radical Islamic terrorist group that is in Somalia. Their number one funder was the taxpayers of Minnesota. And those are also federal taxpayer money. So look, I expect the Department of Justice. They've already prosecuted a number of the fraudsters at the lower level. But I hope they go right up the ladder of accountability and any politicians that are responsible. And to be clear, this happened. Because it was in politicians' political interest for this to happen because they were getting money from campaign donations and they were getting votes from allowing Somalian fraudsters to rob the taxpayers of Minnesota and the American taxpayers. And look, this has happened also in other states. It's happened. in Maine under the Democrat governor there. It's happened in California. It's happened in Illinois. It's happened, I think, all over the country, but predominantly in Democrat states where there are Democrat politicians who are benefiting from turning the other way to fraud. And I think everyone who committed a criminal act should face prosecution and real consequences. Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. Walking into the Garden of Gassimony is one of them. Standing at the Jim Jordan River where Jesus was baptized is another. Watching the sun rise over Jerusalem, gold light spilling across the stones that have witnessed the entire story of faith is something you never forget. Israel isn't a destination. It's a revelation where every site you've studied.

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All right, so, Senator, let's move into this is something you've been really working on. This is the most, like, jock, bro I've ever seen you since I've known you, and it's really been fun for me. Because usually you're geeking out over, like, Supreme Court stuff. I feel like our friendship has moved to another level because now we've got to talk sports and NIL so much. And the college sports bill, it is now reality. Let's walk us through how this was done and what it means for sports fans and saving many sports that were getting canceled around the country that were non-money. money-making sports. So this week was a very, very big week for college sports because the Senate Commerce Committee, which I chair, passed my legislation to protect college sports. And it passed with a big bipartisan vote. The vote was 19 to 9. So we got a bunch of Republicans, a bunch of Democrats. We got more than two-thirds of the committee voted for it. That's really important. It has momentum now going to the Senate floor. I think it's going to pass on the Senate with a big bipartisan vote, and it's going to go to the House. And President Trump is eager to sign it. Now, what's going on in college sports? Listen, college sports. is in crisis right now. Every week you see another story about a program being canceled, women's sports being canceled, track and field being canceled, Olympic sports being canceled, non-revenue sports, tennis being canceled. Yeah. What is happening is you've got total chaos with the transfer portal. You've got athletes transferring two, three, four, five times. You have essentially no rules on eligibility. They're all being decided by lawsuits. It got so ludicrous. You had the Brendan Sorsby case where even though he was gambling on his own games, you had a hometown judge say, no, he can still play anyway. Now, thankfully, Texas Tech. backed away from that decision. I'm glad Tech made that decision to back away. That was an indefensible decision. But it illustrated the chaos we have. You have people that are 26, 27 years old still playing college sports and 28-year-olds playing against 18-year-olds, which is not fair, not right. And athletic programs, they're almost all losing millions of dollars. Many of them are losing tens of millions of dollars because the cost keeps spiraling out of control. And Ben, if Congress doesn't act, I think five years from now, there will be 30 to 50 competitive college football programs, basically a mini NFL. Yeah, it'll be a franchise. If you're in SCD school, you own a franchise. Yeah. And I think all of the other programs go under.

And what that means, by the way, that's not just college football going under. The way athletics works in colleges is football pays for everything else. And so if football goes under, it means those schools, they lose women's sports, they lose their entire athletic program. It means our Olympic athletes are just devastated and the college programs where they develop their skills right now go away. And I think that would be a terrible outcome. And it would also be a terrible outcome. Do you know right now there are more than 500,000 college athletes competing at any given time? Yep. If we allow this chaos to continue to play out, hundreds of thousands of those slots will disappear, those scholarships will disappear. And sports has been an avenue. For millions of young men and women to go to school. Let's be clear. The 500,000 you just mentioned, and this is the part I want people to understand, the majority of college athletes, like 90s, I think some, I saw a study, you may know the number. I want to say it was 98 or 99% of college athletes do not play football or basketball. So if you think about college sports. It is all the other sports. The majority of them are not revenue making sports. Football barely is on most campuses. Sometimes, and depending on what school you're at, if you're to basketball school, then that will be your revenue sport. Outside of that, almost all the others lose money. Yep. If you don't fix this. Everything goes away. And then many of those football programs at 1% of the student body or basketball, which is, I mean, most basketball teams, they have, I think, scholarships twice. I want to say, it's nine in D1. Maybe it's 11 scholarships. I can't remember. They're always moving it around. But for men, like, that's not many people, folks. If you don't fix this, you have a university that now has this doesn't even have an identity in sports. Yeah, look, look, my philosophy in addressing this was, was number one. I didn't worry too much about the powerhouse programs, the big, big programs. Listen, in Texas, University of Texas and Texas A&M, I love them both. I go to games every year. I cheer them on. They're incredible institutions. To be honest, UT and A&M, they are going to survive and thrive regardless of what happens. They would survive the mini NFL and they'd continue to win national championships. But I worried about all of the other programs. To be honest, if we don't act, I'm not convinced any other program in Texas survives. And if you can imagine a Texas without SMU, without TCU, without Baylor, without Texas Tech, without Rice, without University of Houston, that would be a tragic outcome. And so my focus was on maintaining the entire ecosystem. But secondly, my focus was not on the superstar athletes. If you're Michael Jim Jordan, if you're Archmanning, you know what? You're going to get millions of dollars. You're going to be on the Wheaties box. You're going to do great. 99% of college athletes will never play in the NFL, will never play in the NBA. But yet...

athletics is their ticket to college. Look, it was for you. Playing tennis is how you went to Ole Miss. I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure I would have gone to college if it wasn't for having the scholarship, which came through tennis, to pay for college. My family did not have a lot of means. And my dad was the first to admit. And it was like, if you want to go to college. If you want to go to good school, you're going to have to get there and earn it. Sports was my way in. It wasn't going to be the academic road, and that's another avenue you can go. But sports was, and for many of my friends, it was a savior to a better life afterwards, a better member of society. By the way, we pay a lot more taxes when you're successful. So it's a great reinvestment in the country from that standpoint as well. You want your kids to go to college. But for so many, I had roommates, they would have never gotten into college. If it wasn't and got in their family, many, I had two different roommates. They were the first kid in their families to ever go to college. It completely changed the trajectory of their family tree. And it was because of athletics. Well, and some people have said, well, why is Congress getting involved in college sports? And the reason is it's federal laws that Congress has passed that created this chaos. It's why all of the rules got thrown out because they're being sued under existing federal law and every rule keeps getting thrown out. And so Congress created the problem, which means only Congress can fix it because only Congress can alter that federal law. And if we don't act... we can see the crisis unfolding around us. And for millions of young men and women, many college athletes are coming from economically disadvantaged circumstances. Many of them are African American or Hispanic. Over years and decades, we're talking about millions of young men and women who this may be their only path to go to, A, going to college and getting education. But B, learning the disciplines that come from being in organized sports of teamwork and hard work and discipline and sportsmanship. And look, I didn't have the skills to play college sports. I would have loved to. But I played high school sports. And it was, you know, being on, I played basketball and football and soccer. And being on a team in high school, those are really important skills. And it's amazing. I actually asked this at our Senate Republican lunch. I said, all right, how many people around this table? played college sports. And I would say about 20% of the Republicans in the Senate raised their hand and they were college athletes. I mean, that's true. And that's true. You find that with CEOs. You find that the discipline and nobody in the Senate played professional sports, but the discipline and the skills you learn set you up for success in life. Let me ask you one final question on this. Who was behind this that surprised you the most? Nick Sabin was one that I was excited to see that the African American University of Memphis, my hometown football coach, he got behind this and had some great testimony there in front of you guys. I was proud of that as well. But who shocked you that was behind this?

So the support we've seen has been overwhelming. 24 conferences have endorsed this bill. They represent those conferences, represent over 200 different colleges and universities are enthusiastically supporting the bill. The NFL endorsed the bill. The NBA endorsed the bill. Major League Baseball endorsed the bill. The NFA. NFL Players Association endorsed the bill. The NBA Players Association endorsed the bill. The college football association endorsed the bill. We've had Nick Saban is endorsed it. John Kalapari led over 100 college coaches who endorsed the bill. The U.S. Olympic Committee endorsed the bill. So we've seen just enormous support. And I will say the primary opposition. came from the leadership of the Big Ten and the SEC. And look, the SEC is really important in Texas, obviously UTA and M. I think they're great. If Congress doesn't act... I believe the SEC and Big Ten want to create a Super League where they're the only football that exists and everyone else goes out of business. They have a billion-dollar franchise organizations. That's what they would have. And that is a terrible outcome. We explicitly prohibit a Super League in the bill because I want to keep all the other programs alive. Yeah. That's where the resistance has come from. I think we're going to end up having a big, big bipartisan vote. on the Senate floor. My objective is to do this. Get it done. Get it passed. The president's eager to sign it and do all of that before school starts this fall. As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing. Your faith runs deep, deeper than the words on the page, and somewhere in the back of your heart you've always known. There was a place where it would all make sense in a way nothing else ever could. That place is Israel, where the Bible isn't history. It's the ground beneath your feet, where the Sea of Galilee still shimmers at dawn, and the streets of Jerusalem still echo with a story that changed the world. Believers who go, come home. different, more grounded, more certain, more alive in their faith than they have ever been. That's what Israel does. I am, Israel. Come experience the journey your faith was made for. Start planning your trip today. Follow, Visit Israel on social media. That's Visit Israel on Facebook and Instagram. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at good to know facts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit good to know facts.org.

because George Soros has spent the money so effectively. So he's spent propaganda in support of open borders. And you look at all of the people who have been raped and killed by illegal immigrant violent criminals, all the people that have been subject to terror attacks from illegal immigrant violent criminals. But Soros also is creative in his destruction. And he realized that our... Democratic society has vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities that he can target. So he doesn't just target a presidential race. That's an easy, big, sexy target. Yeah. He really pioneered targeting district attorney races. Now, district attorney races used to be sleepy little races. You'd have a Democrat and a Republican, but they both were prosecutors. They both were going to lock up criminals. If you were a murderer, you'd lock up the murderer, you'd prosecute them. There didn't used to be a massive difference between the two sides on DAs. You'd have a little bit different priorities from the one to the other, but everyone agreed violent criminals will lock them up and throw the book at them. That changed when Soros began flooding millions into DA races. Now, these races didn't used to have millions of dollars in them. So this money just appeared out of nowhere, and he elected what are called Soros DAs. And Soros DAs are the prosecution side of the Abolish the Police campaign. Look, Soros funded the Abolish the Police campaign too. If you want to destroy a society, I can think a few more effective ways to do it. then eliminate law enforcement because the result is anarchy and chaos. It's more murders, more rapes, more children being abused. That is, I don't like to ascribe ill intent to someone, but Ben, I will say quite seriously, I do not know any other motivation for George Soros that makes any sense to me other than that he wants to destroy America because his action seems perfectly calculated to destroy America. Yeah, if you look at the, and it's a, it's very calculated. It's prison reform. It's bail reform. It's defund the police. You do that trifecta, which is saying, well, we're going to let people out of jail because we just believe jail is somehow fundamentally wrong. You then say you want to defund the police, so then you have no law enforcement. And then you have bail reform, which says we're going to not put you in jail while we hold you for trial because you don't have a lot of money. So then you're letting rapists and murderers literally back on the street as fast as we catch them. You combine those three. This is a framework for total anarchy in society, which is clearly what Soros wants. Yeah, look, just ask yourself the simple, basic question. Is society better if there are more murderers on the street, more murderers in your community, more murderers living in your neighborhood? Any rational person would say, no, I don't want more murderers in my community. Soros says yes. And he spends millions of dollars to elect DAs who agree with him. And so one of those Soros DAs is a guy named Larry Krasner. He is the left-wing Soros DA in Philadelphia. And instead of going in with a mission of, I'm going to go lock up the bad guys, his mission is quite literally, I'm going to release as many bad guys as I can. Now, you may be saying, come on, that can't be true. That's so extreme. All right, let me just give you the facts.

So just this week, a 5-2 Democrat court. So I'm going to read you what judges who are Democrats said about Larry Krasner. They found that he is so quick to falsely concede error in murder cases. to try to free convicted murderers, that it is tasked the Pennsylvania Attorney General with checking to make sure that the Soros DA is not lying. Now, let me give you a little context of this because legally, this is astonishing. I've never seen anything remotely like this. So a lawyer, particularly a government lawyer, has the ability to do what's called confess error. And confessing error is you go to the court and you say, we screwed up. We made a mistake. We made a legal mistake. We made a factual mistake. And we're confessing error. You should take it from us. We were just wrong. And courts generally give enormous weight to that because... nobody, almost nobody ever confesses error falsely. Like confessing error is against your interest. Right. You're saying you screwed up your job, right? That's what you're saying. So confessing error doesn't happen often and you usually believe it because it's against the interest of the litigant. I want to read from an appellate decision in one of these cases. Here, in this case, reviewed under a King's Bench jurisdiction. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, on behalf of the Commonwealth, conceded that LeVar Brown, a convicted murderer sentenced to death for a separate murder, was entitled to a new trial based upon a facially untimely claim under the PCR. Upon careful review, we conclude this concession was not reliable. More specifically, we find the district attorney's office conceded relief, although none was warranted based on the existing record, violated its duty of candor to the PCR court, withheld material evidence from the court, opposed efforts by Amici to gain access to this evidence, submitted a false stipulation of fact, misstated facts in its pleadings, failed to conduct a reasonable investigation and opposed a required evidentiary hearing. The predictable result was an erroneous grant of a new trial. These circumstances, troubling as they are, would not warrant a remedy beyond reversal of the PCR court's order in this particular case if they were confined to one case. Unfortunately, They aren't. Since 2018, the district attorney's office has conceded relief well over 100 times. By the way, if that's your record, that would mean that you're basically the worst attorney in the history of the world. It's worse than that, but let me get back to it. Let me finish reading it and then I'm as conceded relief well over 100 times, mostly in murder cases like this one.

Incredible. There have been numerous instances of untrustworthy concessions. Lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation and avoidance of hearings. And the problems are poised to continue. There are apparently more than 1,000 cases yet to be reviewed by the District Attorney's Office, Conviction Integrity Unit. and the district attorney's office vigorously defends its checkered concession program as a necessary corrective to pass misdeeds by prior administrations. The district attorney's office, active, ongoing, and problematic concessions program requires broader remedial action to promote just outcomes. Accordingly, in addition to reversing the PCR court's grant of a new trial here, We also hold that in any PCR case in which the district attorney's office concedes relief, the PCR court shall grant the office of the attorney general notice and the right to intervene in the case before ruling on the concession. Regardless of the attorney general's position on the concession, if it chooses to intervene, it may well agree relief is warranted. its independent assessment and participation will enhance the reliability of the proceedings and the PCR court's ultimate decision. Wow. I've never seen that. And I've practiced law a long time. So you said 100 times that means they're terrible lawyers. It's actually worse than that. This is not Larry Krasner saying, I, Larry Krasner, screwed up 100 times. What he's doing is he's looking at murderers who are in jail right now that were put there by his predecessors, by previous district attorneys. And he's going and finding murderers and saying, we should release you. We should release you. We should release you. And then he's going in. He's not just conceding error. He's conceding relief. Relief means what do you get? He's saying, nope, throw out your conviction altogether. Over a hundred times, almost all with murderers, and he's lying. Look, the only reason you do that, go back to the fundamental question that I asked at the beginning of this segment. Do you think America is better off if there are more murderers walking the streets or fewer murders walking the streets? Do you want more murderers living in your neighborhood with your family? Or do you want fewer murderers living in your neighborhood with your family? Anyone who is rational, anyone who loves America, anyone who is not trying to destroy our nation, the obvious answer is, of course, we don't want more murderers. And yet... George Soros and Larry Krasner both do. And by the way, Singham does too. As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast. Every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning.

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