Minnesota Republicans are accusing Democrats of keeping lawmakers in the dark for months about a state-commissioned Medicaid assessment that flagged more than $52 million in improper payments, arguing the delay denied them a chance to act on the report’s specific findings during the legislative session before the election.
“Fraud here has exploded under the Walz administration,” Minnesota Republican Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth told Fox News Digital. “Governor Walz has held no one in his entire administration accountable for the level of fraud. It definitely brings into question what is in that report and why are they hiding it?”
The Walz administration hired Optum to conduct a third-party review of Minnesota’s Medicaid program, scrutinizing 14 high-risk services. The report identified more than $52 million in improper payments but cautioned that improper payments do not necessarily constitute “fraud, waste or abuse.” The Department of Human Services released a heavily redacted version to the public in February, prompting calls from Republican lawmakers to make the full version available so they could address the risks raised during the legislative session.
“Our election here in Minnesota is 29 days away. We’re just four weeks out, and you really have to wonder why they are refusing to do this,” Demuth, who is the GOP gubernatorial candidate, told Fox News Digital.
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Minnesota currently has a divided state legislature, with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) holding a slim 34-33 majority in the Senate and a rare 67-67 partisan tie in the House.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz announced the audit in October 2025, months before allegations of widespread fraud involving members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora drew national attention. Mounting scrutiny of the Walz administration’s handling of alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs contributed to growing political pressure before Walz ended his re-election campaign in January.
Republican state Sen. Jordan Rasmusson is also accusing the Walz administration and his Democratic counterparts of seeking to “minimize” the fraud issue in the state.
“I think it’s really hard for Democrats, elected Democrats in Minnesota, to admit that we have a fraud problem of this scale, and to take accountability for those failings,” Rasmusson told Fox News Digital.
The Department of Human Services said the report was heavily redacted to protect Optum’s trade secrets and prevent the release of sensitive security information that could provide criminals a “roadmap” for committing fraud.
Rasmusson introduced an amendment in April to make the full Optum report public, but it failed along party lines. A version of Rasmusson’s provision was later passed in May as part of a broader budget package.
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Under the law, DHS must provide the initial Optum reports to members of a legislative committee with “jurisdiction over human services policy and finance” following a joint request from the committee’s chair and ranking minority member. Lawmakers may review the report but cannot publicly release protected nonpublic information it contains.
Rasmusson said he issued a request for the full report in June. State Rep. Mohamud Noor, DFL co-chair of the Human Services Finance and Policy Committee, and former GOP House co-Chair Joe Schomacker requested the report in May. The report did not become available to a select group of lawmakers until last week.
“I’m grateful that it’s out, but it’s very disappointing we couldn’t have returned to St. Paul to address it,” Republican state Rep. Dawn Gillman told Fox News Digital, noting that lawmakers will have to wait until January to address the report.
“The broader takeaway is that the Walz administration could have given us more access to those months ago,” Rasmusson told Fox News Digital. “Legislative Democrats could have joined Republicans and got access to this information months ago during session.”
However, state Sen. John Hoffman, who now has access to the report, pushed back on the notion that lawmakers needed full access to enact meaningful changes.
“This is a report about vulnerabilities in public programs,” Hoffman said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Why would we release that to the public before we fixed them? We wouldn’t publish a report about which banks don’t lock their doors, either.”
“The rest of us got to work passing legislation to ensure high-quality services, continuity of care for people in need and safeguards to protect against fraud,” Hoffman continued. “Having reviewed the report, I can tell you it is already outdated, and the gaps and weaknesses it raises have already been addressed by laws we passed this year.”
But Rasmusson, who also has the report, disagreed with Hoffman.
“After reviewing the unredacted Optum report, my main takeaway is that it underscores the systemic failures of the Walz administration and Minnesota Democrats to protect Minnesota from fraud,” Rasmusson told Fox News Digital.
“Whether it is issues with determining the eligibility of program recipients, determining whether providers are actually providing real services or not, or even some of the basic analytics that would catch fraud, Minnesota is very far behind where it should be in program integrity initiatives,” Rasmusson continued.
Fox News Digital reached out to DHS, which confirmed that select lawmakers now had the report.
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“We appreciate legislators’ interest in receiving a copy of the unredacted initial Optum report from February 2026,” Minnesota Department of Human Services Temporary Commissioner John Connolly said in a statement. “In alignment with the law passed by the Legislature last session, the Minnesota Department of Human Services released the Optum reports last week.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
