Demuth is arguing that Klobuchar, despite representing Minnesota in the U.S. Senate for years, remained publicly silent about the state’s growing fraud problem while issuing hundreds of statements on other issues.
A review highlighted by the Republican campaign examined more than 1,000 press releases issued by Klobuchar’s Senate office between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2025. According to the review, the releases did not mention Feeding Our Future or several other major Minnesota fraud investigations.
The researchers reportedly searched Klobuchar’s releases using terms such as “Minnesota fraud,” “social services fraud,” “Medicaid fraud,” “autism fraud,” “Housing Stabilization Services,” “child nutrition fraud,” “DHS fraud,” “nonprofit fraud” and “Feeding Our Future.”
According to the findings, none of those terms appeared.
That absence is now becoming a central line of attack for Demuth as the November election approaches.
“As Feeding Our Future was breaking and all of the fraud that was being talked about, the absent voice that I was noticing was Senator Klobuchar,” Demuth told Fox News.
The criticism is particularly significant because Klobuchar’s Senate office did address other forms of fraud during the same period, according to the review. Yet Demuth’s campaign says there was no comparable public response focused on the massive fraud investigations taking place in Klobuchar’s home state.
The Feeding Our Future investigation burst into public view in early 2022 and quickly developed into one of the largest fraud cases in Minnesota history. Federal prosecutors alleged that enormous sums of money intended for child nutrition programs were instead diverted through a complex network of fraudulent claims.
The case was only the beginning of broader concerns about oversight across Minnesota’s government-funded social services programs.
As additional investigations emerged, the political pressure on Walz and his administration intensified. Critics increasingly questioned whether state agencies had sufficient safeguards in place to identify suspicious activity before taxpayer money disappeared.
Those concerns eventually became one of the biggest political controversies of Walz’s time as governor.
On Jan. 5, 2026, Walz announced that he would not seek a third term. While his decision opened the door to a new political chapter in Minnesota, the fraud issue did not disappear with his announcement.
Instead, it has become a major test for the candidates seeking to lead the state next.
Klobuchar easily secured the Democratic nomination and enters the general election as the leading candidate to succeed Walz. But Demuth is attempting to turn the senator’s previous silence into a broader argument about leadership, accountability, and whether Minnesota’s political establishment failed to recognize the scale of the problem until it became impossible to ignore.
The issue is especially notable because Klobuchar is now campaigning on promises to crack down on waste and abuse within state government.
Earlier this month, she released a campaign advertisement pledging to launch a comprehensive audit of Minnesota government on her first day in office, with the stated goal of identifying waste, fraud, and abuse.
“It’s time for results, not excuses,” Klobuchar wrote on X while promoting the proposal.
Demuth, however, is likely to continue pressing a different question: If fraud and government accountability are now important enough to anchor Klobuchar’s campaign, why did she have so little to say publicly while some of Minnesota’s largest alleged fraud schemes were already making national headlines?
That question could become increasingly difficult to avoid as the campaign moves toward November.
For Minnesota voters, the race is shaping up to be about far more than simply choosing Walz’s successor. It may ultimately become a referendum on who bears responsibility for the failures that allowed major fraud allegations to grow—and which candidate voters trust to prevent the next scandal before billions more taxpayer dollars are put at risk.
