Judge denies Feeding Our Future leader's request to sanction Minnesota Department of Education

A Ramsey County judge has denied Feeding Our Future executive director Aimee Bock's request to sanction the Minnesota Department of Education. Bock claimed the department destroyed and hid evidence from discovery in a lawsuit she filed against the department.

Bock, who led the St. Anthony nonprofit now at the center of a massive FBI fraud investigation, alleged earlier this year that Education Department employees tried to cover up information by using a burner phone and misspelling words in messages to one another to evade being discovered in a 2020 lawsuit that Feeding Our Future filed against the agency.

An attorney for the Education Department called Bock's allegations "pure theater" in court documents.

Ramsey County District Court Judge Laura Nelson denied Bock's motion May 30.

The Education Department claimed in court documents that Feeding Our Future wanted to "mask" its fraud by distracting the agency with "sham" litigation in 2020. The Education Department contacted FBI agents in 2021 about their concerns, kicking off a sweeping investigation that's led to federal criminal charges against 70 people, including Bock.

Bock denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in the criminal case. Her trial hasn't been scheduled yet.

In the separate civil case, the Education Department sued Bock and her now-defunct nonprofit last year, seeking to recoup legal fees from the 2020 litigation. Bock filed her own counterclaims earlier this year.

Bock, 43, of Apple Valley, is representing herself in the civil case. She alleged in court documents that Education Department employees violated state law by deleting large amounts of data, mislabeling documents and intentionally misspelling words, such as "stoop pais" or "stop payes" instead of "stop pay," or referring to Feeding Our Future as "F" or by a code word, "peanuts," to conceal documents from the 2020 case.

One employee mentioned using a burner phone while another used a personal e-mail account, which Bock said was to evade producing evidence in the lawsuit. She asked Nelson in court documents to sanction the department over a "systematic scheme" to ensure "crucial evidence" that led to the 2020 lawsuit wasn't turned over.

"MDE should not be allowed to conceal its actions and then sue Bock for questioning its actions," Bock wrote of the department. "People need faith that our judicial system will not tolerate such abuses."

Assistant Attorney General Christopher Stafford wrote in court documents that Bock is only making "inflammatory" allegations because the department "diligently preserved" data as it's required to do in litigation, turning over 330,000 pages of documents and internal communication in 2021 — including the documents Bock is highlighting now.

"She relies on half-truths and incomplete information in an attempt to garner headlines and side-step the actual process of presenting and testing evidence before the Court," he wrote.

Stafford added that Bock misconstrued "innocent communications" and took conversations out of context. The so-called burner phone was a cheap flip phone the agency issued to a receptionist when she worked remotely during the pandemic, he said.

Before Nelson issued her order, Bock said in court documents that, if the judge sided with the agency, it would set a "dangerous precedent" that organizations can hide documents from legal discovery.

In May, Nelson denied the Education Department's motions to dismiss other claims brought by Bock, including that the department violated state law by not responding to all of her data requests. The Education Department asked Nelson to reconsider, but she declined. Nelson granted the department's motion to dismiss other claims by Bock, including defamation.

Feeding Our Future quickly grew to be one of the largest sponsors of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded meal programs in Minnesota, which reimburse schools, nonprofits and daycares for feeding low-income children after school and during the summer. The influx drew suspicion from the Education Department, which denied Feeding Our Future's meal site applications and terminated some meal sites.

Feeding Our Future sued in November 2020. In 2021, the department stopped all payments to the nonprofit, but a judge told the department he saw no regulation allowing it to stop paying Feeding Our Future and threatened to hold the agency in contempt of court if it didn't act quickly on applications. The Education Department resumed payments and two supervisors contacted the FBI instead.

"I had never seen payments of that magnitude before," nutrition program supervisor Emily Honer testified in April in the first federal trial involving Feeding Our Future's food sites.

Feeding Our Future agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in 2022, seven days after the FBI raided its offices and Bock's home.

State Republicans scrutinized the Education Department's oversight of the meal programs in 2022, holding Capitol hearings questioning officials and criticizing them for not stopping alleged fraud sooner.

The Legislative Auditor's Office is conducting a special review of the department's oversight of Feeding Our Future. That report, which was initially slated for release last summer, will examine whether the Education Department met federal rules for monitoring Feeding Our Future and what, if anything, it could've done differently to stop the alleged fraud. It will now be released next Thursday.