Impeachment hearings against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison will officially begin next week, Republican members of the state House Freedom Caucus announced Thursday.
The impeachment hearings, which are centered around the conduct of both Democratic politicians regarding the state’s entitlement-scam scandal, could bring a trial in the state Senate.
The Minnesota House Freedom Caucus announced in a “quick update” that the impeachment hearings will begin on April 15.
“It is confirmed that we have impeachment hearings next week, Wednesday, in Rules Committee,” legislators said in the video. “Please tune in.”
BREAKING IMPEACHMENT NEWS: The Minnesota House Freedom Caucus has just announced that impeachment hearings for Tim Walz and Keith Ellison will begin next Wednesday, April 15.pic.twitter.com/uOPtN1ol41
— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) April 10, 2026
While Walz has declared he won’t seek another term as governor after the Feeding Our Futures scandal unraveled in the last half of 2025, Minnesota Republicans decided earlier this year that they want him gone before his term is out in January of next year.
A House resolution filed last month would impeach Walz “for corrupt conduct in office” due to “concealing or permitting others to conceal widespread fraud within Minnesota state-administered programs despite repeated warnings, audits, reports, and public indicators of systematic abuse.”
The articles added he “was made aware, through briefings, audits, agency reports, or public findings, of substantial and ongoing fraud involving taxpayer money within state programs; failed to take timely and effective action to halt fraud in state programs despite possessing executive authority to do so; allowed fraudulent activity to continue after credible warnings were raised; and created or tolerated an environment in which disclosure of fraud was delayed, minimized, or obscured from legislators and the public.”
The articles against Ellison will be similar, KMSP-TV reported last month, along with “crimes and misdemeanors” related to his conduct in office.
GOP state Rep. Mike Wiener, who authored drafts of the resolutions, also said that Ellison had been active in “undermining” the FACE Act by defending protesters who entered a church in St. Paul during protests in the city; several individuals, including former CNN journalist Don Lemon, now face charges in that case.
However, as KTTC-TV reports, both impeachment and removal are difficult hurdles for Republicans in the state legislature.
Impeachment itself is the far easier hurdle, as the House — which votes on whether or not the governor and attorney general should be impeached — is divided evenly between Republicans and Democratic-Farmer-Labor representatives, 67 each.
(In Minnesota, Democrats go under the name “Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party” due to a 1940s merger between the Democrats and a Minnesota-only progressive party which often split the vote between left-leaning candidates in the state.)
Theoretically, then, only one DFL vote would be needed if the Republicans voted as a bloc in order to impeach Walz and/or Ellison.
However, the DFL controls the Senate by a single seat — 34 to 33 — and a supermajority of 45 votes would be needed to convict either one.
Whatever the case, an impeachment trial would constitute a massive fall from grace for Walz, a two-term governor whose popularity — and whose use of the catchphrase “weird” to describe Republicans — rocketed him from relative obscurity to Kamala Harris’ running mate in the summer of 2024.
A lackluster showing in the vice presidential debate, combined with buyers remorse over not picking Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro after Harris lost that swing state, dulled Walz’s star somewhat after the election was over.
Then came the unraveling of the Feeding Our Futures scandal, in which dozens of nonprofit operators — mostly in Minneapolis’ Somali community — were charged and convicted for stealing what’s estimated to be tens of billions of dollars in money from COVID-era free-meal programs.
After investigations uncovered what appeared to be similar fraud in childcare centers and autism treatment in Minnesota’s tight-knit Somali community, Walz announced that he would halt a run for a third term and would retire from politics for good.
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