As the city of Minneapolis faces a $1 billion welfare scandal, Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen spoke to Fox News Digital about his belief that Gov. Tim Walz is not only directly responsible for the controversy, but suggested that a “cover up” that’s “worse than Watergate” is at play.

Walz’s role in what’s been labeled by prosecutors as the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, stemming from allegations that the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future and its associates defrauded federal child-nutrition programs for hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19 aid, has been a major topic of conversation in the gubernatorial race in recent weeks.

“In Minnesota, I don’t think that there’s any way to cut it other than to say the buck has to stop somewhere,” Jensen told Fox News Digital. “And it’s always been that the buck stops at the governor’s desk. Arguably, the governor is the CEO of the state of Minnesota and the business of the government. And Tim Walz has been derelict in doing his duties, and he’s absolutely corrupted common sense.”

The dereliction, Jensen explained, is evident when one examines a timeline he says shows Walz knew about Feeding Our Future fraud far earlier than he has admitted and then misled Minnesotans about his administration’s response.

“Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Education knew in 2020 that there was a problem… but they didn’t get the FBI involved until 2021,” Jensen said. “And yet they’ve made claims that as soon as they learned about it, they got the FBI involved. That’s not true. Their timeline’s a year off.”

Jensen argues the delay was not just mismanagement but part of a broader pattern of deflection and dishonesty from the governor’s office.

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Dr. Scott Jensen claims Gov. Tim Walz is directly responsible for the COVID-19 fraud scheme involving Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future.AP

Jensen cited several examples of actions by Walz that he views as deflecting the blame onto others, including in 2022 after the first indictments in the scandal were handed down by the FBI and U.S. Attorney, and Walz placed blame on district court judge John Guthman for allegedly forcing the state to continue fraudulent payments.

In what was described by media outlets at the time as a “rare public rebuke,” Guthman fired back at Walz accusing him of making “inaccurate statements.”

“When Judge Guthman did that, then you saw Tim Walz and Keith Ellison try for someone else they could blame it on,” Jensen told Fox News Digital. “So they blamed it on the FBI and said, ‘Well, the FBI told us we had to keep paying because we’re not supposed to interfere with their investigation.’ And the FBI said, ‘We didn’t make you continue fraudulent payments to the Feeding Our Future agency.’”