THE MINNESOTA DHS WHISTLEBLOWER LETTER
I analyze the letter and what it means to Minnesota and America
THE MINNESOTA DHS WHISTLEBLOWER LETTER
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
Published verbatim. Analyzed below.
This document was sent by individuals identifying themselves as current or former employees of the Minnesota Department of Human Services. It is presented exactly as received, without edits, amendments, or stylistic intervention.
BEGIN VERBATIM LETTER
Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.
In addition to retaliating against whistleblower, Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance. Media and politicians supporting Tim Walz or the DFL-agenda attacked whistleblowers who were trying to raise red flags on fraudulent activities.
This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz. Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet - even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers. These same leaders are not qualified for their jobs, instead getting leadership jobs via Tim Walz’s friendship so state government were left floundering. DFL lawmakers refused to acknowledge fraud and deflected any serious conversation to stop fraud. Biased mainstream media such as WCCO and MPR showed absolutely no interest in covering fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral health and disability services were built without any guardrails against fraud, all in an attempt to extract more funding from legislature and the federal government.
As staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet. Sometimes more. Leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action, such as stopping fraud, that would have an adverse impact on their image. To date, no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud whether it’s Shireen Gandhi, Jess Geil, Jodi Harpstead, Natasha Merz, Eric Grumdahl or others.
It is a structure created and maintained by Tim Walz who has created an environment of inter-related agencies and institutions including the media - that help foster fraud through retaliation and turning a blind eye in exchange for political gain in the form of high power agency leadership jobs or other perks.
Fundamentally, Tim Walz is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity, has poor leadership abilities, and has never taken any accountability for his role in fraud. Instead, Tim Walz deflects by blaming national politics for his own failings and distracts the public with inveterate lying. These lies include his reference of a budget surplus under his tenure. Fact is, Minnesota never had a surplus, we had been given federal ARPA funds that were conflated as surplus money otherwise, we’d be in a deficit. And those ARPA funds, which were meant to be temporary funds were used to create more leadership positions for Tim Walz “buddies.”
As such, we can’t fight fraud in Minnesota alone hence why we’re appealing to the federal levels of government. We need all the help we can get as Tim Walz’s agency leaders have upped their brazen approach in covering up their knowledge of fraud.
We are grateful to numerous solid politicians (esp the Fraud Committee) and media outlets who are trying to halt fraud. We are also grateful to other whistleblowers who are bravely stepping up.
Thank You NY Times for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage.
END VERBATIM LETTER
II. What This Document Is — And Isn’t
This reads overwhelmingly like genuine internal whistleblower testimony.
There is no polish.
No messaging discipline.
No consultant fingerprints.
No “get-out-the-vote” rhetoric.
No suspiciously clean structure.
No slogans.
Instead, it has the unmistakable traits of bureaucracy under emotional strain:
rambling specificity
frustration with process
references only insiders would know
accusations shaped by lived proximity, not politics
fear, isolation, and career jeopardy
moral exhaustion
Political operatives simply do not write this way.
This is the sound of a government workforce breaking under the weight of misconduct they were ordered to ignore.
And Minnesota DHS has a long, well-documented history of exactly this kind of internal retaliation, especially surrounding:
Feeding Our Future
daycare fraud
behavioral health billing fraud
tribal compact misuse
ARPA misclassification
OLA sidelining
Nothing here contradicts known patterns.
Everything here matches them.
III. The Pattern: Minnesota’s Political Decay
Minnesota did not drift into this crisis; it slid.
For a decade, the state’s political class has lived in effortless partnership with:
a compliant press
an activist bureaucracy
a legislature indifferent to oversight
a cultural ecosystem terrified of criticism from organized blocs
Fraud did not emerge from poverty or desperation.
It emerged from impunity.
Programs were designed to shovel money outward faster than accountability could shovel it back.
And no one in power wanted to slow the conveyor belt.
IV. Tim Walz’s Model of Governance
The whistleblower letter reveals something deeper:
a style of governance that treats fraud not as failure but as fuel.
This is not incompetence.
It is a system:
Inflate funding requests.
Loosen oversight.
Protect “favored” communities from scrutiny.
Reward loyal apparatchiks with promotions.
Punish internal dissent.
Call it “equity.”
Rely on media silence.
Win elections on the illusion of surplus and compassion.
Micro-Steyn might call it:
“Government-by-looking-away.”
Bob would be more direct:
“They stopped governing and started laundering excuses.”
V. Why This Matters Beyond Minnesota
Minnesota is not merely a state.
It is a model.
Blue-state America tests its most dangerous policies there first:
police defunding
sanctuary expansion
bureaucratic immunity
nonprofit pipelines
refugee patronage networks
ARPA-to-payroll bloat
media choreographed denial
And the fraud that followed — billions siphoned, billions untracked — is not an accident of scale.
It is the predictable outcome of a political culture that prizes symbolism over sovereignty and loyalty over law.
Walz didn’t cause the culture.
He simply perfected the method.
VI. Final Reflection
Fraud does not thrive in darkness.
Fraud thrives in silenced daylight — when those who can speak are punished and those who should listen refuse to.
Minnesota reached this point because its institutions preferred comfort to truth, narrative to accountability, friendship to competence.
The whistleblowers have done their part.
They spoke.
They risked their careers.
They told the truth plainly.
The rest is up to us.
As Buckley might phrase it:
“A politics that cannot defend its actions must instead prosecute your reactions.”
And Minnesota has now learned the cost of such a politics.
Bob would put it even shorter:
“If you bury truth long enough, someone eventually digs it up.”
GROOK: THE QUIETEST TRUTH
They hid the facts beneath the spin,
Assuming silence always wins.
They raised the walls, suppressed the word,
And feared the truth that might be heard.
But whispers grow when lies persist—
A fact the guilty always miss.
For once the quiet voices rise,
They bring down kingdoms built on lies.
————————————
SIDEBAR: ARPA — Minnesota’s Phantom Surplus in Five Lines
1. ARPA was temporary federal COVID bailout money, not state revenue.
Minnesota called it a “surplus,” but it was a one-time federal transfusion.
2. Walz’s administration treated temporary dollars as permanent income.
Programs expanded, agencies hired, and payroll ballooned on money that would vanish.
3. When ARPA expired, the “surplus” evaporated and a deficit reappeared.
The state budget hadn’t grown stronger — it had grown addicted.
4. ARPA flowed disproportionately into fraud-prone programs.
Behavioral health, childcare, housing, and nonprofit grants got the weakest oversight.
5. Minnesota didn’t have a surplus — it had a mirage.
A federal bailout mislabeled as prosperity, then spent as if it would never end.