Minnesota Charges O’Keefe for Asking Questions. Walz’s Billions Get a Shrug

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on October 30, 2026

Featured photo: Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two journalists walked into Minneapolis polling places in August, asked election judges how Minnesota’s vouching law works, filmed the answers and walked out. Nobody cast a ballot. Nobody signed the vouching oath. On Wednesday, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged them with felonies anyway.

James O’Keefe, 42, and Cam Higby, 26, each face one count of identity theft and one count of unlawful voting, according to the county attorney’s office. Prosecutors say the two “misrepresented their identities by giving election judges names of registered voters in the precinct” during the Aug. 11 primary. The office’s own release concedes the key fact: “Mr. Higby and Mr. O’Keefe did not sign the oath.” Their first court appearance is set for Nov. 16, MPR News reported, nearly two weeks after Election Day.

“They did not intend to vote”

Moriarty said the quiet part at her own news conference. “I think it’s pretty clear they did not intend to vote. That’s not the question here,” she said, according to MPR. Her theory is that giving another person’s name while asking about a ballot is a crime by itself, whether or not anyone votes. She also said, according to an account of the news conference published by O’Keefe Media Group, that “there is no such thing as undercover investigation in the polling place.”

That is a remarkable claim about the First Amendment. Undercover reporting has exposed rigged meatpacking plants, abusive asylums and corrupt officials for more than a century. O’Keefe called the charges “an attempt to criminalize investigative journalism” and said his team “clearly stopped and walked out of the polling places to avoid even touching a voting ballot.” In a statement posted by O’Keefe Media Group, O’Keefe also cited 2012 testimony in which, by his account, then-Attorney General Eric Holder said a similar O’Keefe video at a D.C. precinct did not show conduct that would have “subjected him to criminal prosecution.” MPR found that the specific election charges filed here have been used only once in Minnesota since 2021.

What the videos were about

Minnesota lets a registered voter vouch for the address of up to eight unregistered people on Election Day, under oath. O’Keefe and Higby set out to test how far that system would bend. Secretary of State Steve Simon says poll workers did exactly what they were supposed to do. If that is true, the system worked and the videos showed it. Charging the reporters five days before a general election sends a different message: ask hard questions about how Minnesota runs its elections and you may need a defense lawyer.

Election integrity cuts both ways. Anyone who actually tries to vote under someone else’s name should be prosecuted. But a prosecutor who admits the defendants had no intent to vote, and who files the case on the eve of a national election, invites the suspicion that the target is the reporting, not the conduct.

Meanwhile, the billions

The contrast with Minnesota’s fraud scandal is hard to miss. In June, the House Oversight Committee released a staff report titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion.” It found that state leaders knew of “credible and systemic fraud” in social-services programs as early as 2019 but failed to act. It estimated $300 million in federal child-nutrition funds lost and “potentially $9 billion in Medicaid-related funds to be lost or placed at serious risk.” It also found that the Walz administration “retaliated against state employees who raised concerns about fraud.”

President Trump put it bluntly on Wednesday. “Can you imagine if a Republican stole money like Governor Tim Walz stole from Minnesota? They’d give you the electric chair!” he posted on Truth Social. The Oversight findings are a congressional staff report, not a court verdict. But the state’s priorities are on the record. Whistleblowers who flagged real money walking out the door were punished. Two reporters who took nothing are facing felonies.

Minnesotans vote Tuesday. They can judge for themselves which of those cases tells them more about who is protecting their elections, and their tax dollars.

TNT Staff