Brooks: Fraud allegations are latest work of right-wing influencers descending on Minnesota in search of scandal

Strangers with cameras have been coming here for years to investigate what they think is wrong with Minnesota.

Or who they think is wrong with Minnesota.

A decade ago, it was future Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the sidewalks of Cedar-Riverside, leading his Fox News camera crews on walking tours of the neighborhood he insisted on calling “Little Mogadishu.”

“An area now considered by some,” Hegseth paused meaningfully, “as ground zero for ISIS recruitment inside America.”

A few years later, it was future presidential adviser Laura Loomer, bundled in a parka, insisting that — somewhere, just off camera — Minneapolis was a city of no-go zones controlled by Somalis. She and fellow personalities Jacob Wohl and future “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander fundraised off their visit and compiled their findings into a 25-minute YouTube documentary.

It featured endless shots of Loomer and crew knocking on doors as the soundtrack built to a suspenseful crescendo until…nobody answered. Six years later, the video has 8,900 views and 240 likes.

Last weekend, it was a 23-year-old right-wing influencer named Nick Shirley, banging on doors and questioning why no one would let a stranger with a camera into a day care center.

“We have to be careful,” David warned him. “Because these people are very violent. They’re exceptionally violent.”

Around town they went, knocking on day care doors, demanding to be let in, demanding to know why there were no toddlers playing outside on a snowy day in Minnesota. Each one, they concluded, must be a fraudulent front, though state inspectors say they’ve visited each site in the past six months.

Shirley’s 43-minute tour of Somali-run day cares aired on YouTube over the weekend and was quickly boosted by the richest man on the planet and the vice president of the United States. It raked up millions of views and prompted the federal government to deploy more agents to Minneapolis.

On Dec. 30 the Trump administration announced it was freezing federal child care funding to the entire state. Not in response to the years of work state and federal investigators have already put into investigating fraud in the state’s day care system, but in response to a YouTube video by a man who once described his job as “making satire on the internet.”

The question, for media ethicist and University of Minnesota professor Jane Kirtley, was why.

What wasn’t well documented, Kirtley noted as she watched the video, were Shirley’s claims about fraud.

“I’m not saying that anyone who’s an influencer can’t be doing great journalism,” she said. Seymour Hersh broke huge stories just by filing Freedom of Information requests. Darnella Frazier captured the murder of George Floyd on her cellphone and won a Pulitzer. “But he’s not doing that much original reporting. He’s just out there ambushing people.”

In Shirley’s video, she saw accusations without accountability and claims without proof. Shirley didn’t explain who “David” is and why anyone should believe anything he says. He appeared to lie to day care center workers about wanting to register a child at these facilities.

“This viral video — both the content and the approach — did not seem to be transparent,” Kirtley said. “He’s not explaining to people who he is, where he comes from, where his monetary support comes from, what affiliations he has with [President Donald] Trump and the Trump administration. He’s not telling us any of that.”

A CNN camera crew caught up to Shirley — a guest at an October roundtable with the president — as he stuck around in Minneapolis this week.

“OK,” he said. “You bring up a fair point.”

The Department of Justice has estimated that fraudsters stole more than $300 billion nationwide from 19 different pandemic relief programs and the taxpayers who funded them. They defrauded the Paycheck Protection Program. COVID-19 disaster loans. Unemployment insurance. Child nutrition programs. Small business loans. Someone applied for a $17,931 PPP loan for a nonexistent orange grove in Mantorville, Minn.

The worst of the worst — Minnesota-based Feeding Our Future — siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to feed hungry children. The ringleaders were caught, prosecuted and sent to prison. Others await sentencing.