EXCLUSIVE: Anyone who thinks the Big Tech censorship days of the Hunter Biden era are over is dead wrong. Just ask Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whose major fraud-related mismanagement scandal is nowhere to be found on Google News.
Walz, who is running for re-election and seen as a potential 2028 contender, is engulfed in a political scandal after media reports revealed his administration allegedly overlooked one of the largest COVID-19 relief fraud schemes to date, apparently to avoid upsetting Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community.
Even Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been implicated after leaked audio captured him offering to help some of the now-indicted figures. Originally released in April, the recordings have resurfaced online this week amid renewed scrutiny. The scandal has triggered separate investigations by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. House Oversight Committee, which is probing Walz directly.
MRC’s Findings: Google kept stories about these scandals off its Google News site from Sunday, Nov. 29 through Nov. 30. This aligns with Google’s history of election interference since 2008, a pattern MRC has documented scores of times. Add to this list Google News’s most recent shenanigans: burying Democratic scandals in the lead-up to the November 2025 elections in New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
Voters who routinely read articles in right-leaning publications likely learned about those scandals, but the majority of voters get their news from other sources. When left-leaning media and Big Tech news sites hide these stories, many Americans are kept in the dark about the issues that impact election choices.
An MRC poll taken just after the 2020 election revealed that 45.1% of voters who pulled the lever for Joe Biden had never heard of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and 9.4% of those voters said they would not have voted for Biden if they had only known about the scandal. Big Tech hid stories about the scandal, helping Biden to secure a victory in that election.
It appears that Google was just getting started. MRC also found that Google News did not feature separate political scandals involving House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett and Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick the day the three stories broke in November and the day after. Notably, other Big Tech aggregators, including MSN, Yahoo News, AOL and Apple News, also blocked stories about the scandals affecting the additional trio of Democrats.
Chronologically, the scandal stories emerged as follows:
The Scandals Ignored by Big Tech: Reported Rampant “Fraud” in Minnesota
Walz and Ellison are under a barrage of online and legal scrutiny over their reported mismanagement of a sprawling Somali-run COVID-19 relief “fraud” ring. Even Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland highlighted in a press statement that the indictments alleged the “largest” pandemic “fraud scheme in the nation.”
At the center was Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota non-profit claiming to provide meals to homeless children and other vulnerable individuals during the pandemic.
The non-profit worked with local businesses, reportedly mostly Somali-owned, and submitted invoices to the Walz administration for reimbursement. Federal investigators later discovered many of the meals never existed, and funds were used for personal expenses, including cars and foreign real estate. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department is investigating City Journal’s Nov. 19 reporting that some of the funds “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab.”
The scandal gained renewed attention after the left-leaning New York Times reported on Nov. 30 that “critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota,” a key Democratic voting bloc in the state.
While The Times has a relatively large subscriber base, Big Tech’s media outlets, like Google News, are growing rapidly in reach and influence. When Google News chooses to hide stories, it has a dramatic impact on what the public knows.
Stacey Plaskett Took Orders from Jeffrey Epstein
Another censored story involved Plaskett. Bombshell text messages revealed she quietly corresponded with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during an anti-Trump hearing in 2019. The publication of the text messages came on the heels of Democrats trying to tie Trump to Epstein.
The messages surfaced on Nov. 14, as part of the trove of documents released by the House Oversight Committee, and garnered extensive media coverage.
The messages revealed Plaskett texted Jeffries before, during and after the hearing. Jeffries’s texts appeared to have influenced Plaskett’s line of questioning during the hearing. In one instance, a time-stamped video of the hearing appeared to show Plaskett cautiously scanning her surroundings as Epstein texted her:
“Cohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,” Epstein texted Plaskett, seemingly referring to Trump assistant Rhona Graff.
“RONA??” Plaskett asked, later adding: “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym.”
“That’s his assistant,” Epstein replied. Moments later, Plaskett went on to question Cohen on Graff, suggesting that Epstein indeed influenced her line of questioning.
“Mr. Weisselberg and other individuals, Ms. Rona. Who are those individuals? Are they with the Trump organization? And are there other people we should be meeting with?” Plaskett asked Cohen.
Even elitist media pressed Plaskett for answers, but she dismissed the communications as routine constituent interactions. At the time, Epstein was a Virgin Islands resident, which Plaskett represents as a non-voting member of Congress.
Despite longstanding questions about their ties, not a single story appeared on Google News, MSN, Yahoo News or AOL from Nov. 14 onward centered around the Plaskett-Epstein scandal.
Hakeem Jeffries-Tied Group Attempted to Recruit Epstein to Solicit Money
Jeffries, the most powerful Democrat in the House, faced scrutiny after one of his consulting firms attempted to recruit Epstein for a 2013 fundraiser with then-President Barack Obama. Big Tech once again buried the story.
The controversy began on Nov. 18 and centered on a 2013 email from Dynamic SRG, a consulting firm retained by Jeffries’s campaign, inviting Epstein to the fundraiser. The effort seemingly aimed to support Democrats’ 2014 election efforts.
At the time, Epstein was already a registered sex offender. The email from Dynamic SRG’s Lisa Rossi encouraged him to contact her “if you would like to get involved with the dinner, or would like to get an opportunity to get to know Hakeem better.”
In a tense exchange with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Jeffries claimed he had “no recollection of the email,” adding that he “never had a conversation with him, never met him, know nothing about him other than the extreme things that he’s been convicted of doing.”
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick Indicted in FEMA Fraud
Just as Big Tech giants buried stories about Plaskett and Jeffries, another major Democratic scandal went completely ignored: Cherfilus-McCormick’s indictment in a $5 million FEMA “fraud” scheme.
Cherfilus-McCormick, a two-term Florida Democrat, faces a maximum sentence of 53 years after a grand jury indicted her for allegedly stealing $5 million in overpaid FEMA funds.
The indictment, announced Nov. 19, alleges that Trinity Health Care Services, formerly owned by relatives of Cherfilus-McCormick, received funds from a FEMA-backed state program (the Florida Division of Emergency Management) after a FDEM clerical error inflated the payment from $50,578.50 to $5,057,850.
Instead of returning the money, Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother Edwin conspired to keep it, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said some funds flowed to her 2021 congressional campaign via straw donors. The indictment further alleged that Cherfilus-McCormick also filed a false federal tax return, claiming political and personal expenses as business deductions.
The probe dates to the Biden administration and has sparked bipartisan calls for her resignation. Despite the bombshell allegations, all these news aggregators buried coverage of the scandal.
Methodology: The Media Research Center monitored the homepages of major news aggregators, including Apple News, AOL News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News. MRC did the searches around 10:00 a.m. EST on the day each scandal broke and the following day.
The scandals were reported on the following dates: Walz on Nov. 29, Cherfilus-McCormick on Nov. 19, Jeffries on Nov. 18 and Plaskett on Nov. 14. MRC analyzed each aggregator homepage on the following dates: Nov. 29-30, Nov. 19-20, Nov. 18-19, and Nov. 14-15.
