Republican dog and pony show in St Cloud, MN, had Bessent saying a question about a reported $420 million over-payment for a shuttered CoreCivic private prison in terms of waste & abuse was a waste of his time. No shit. Really. He said that. About $420 million. [UPDATED]
During the press conference, KARE 11’s Lou Raguse asked about the station’s recent reporting on a lucrative deal secured by CoreCivic, the private prison company, which sold its Appleton, Minn., facility to the federal government for hundreds of millions more than what the company had hoped to get from the state.
“If the administration has declared war on waste and fraud, could you explain the $420 million overpayment for a prison in Appleton, Minnesota when the company offered it to the state of Minnesota for $75 million?”
Bessent: “Yeah, I don’t know anything about that. What we are here to do is to prosecute criminal fraud. And any question like that that deflects away from it, I think is a waste of our time.”
Scott Bessent, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, listens while other members of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud speak during a press conference discussing advancements in what the department calls the War on Fraud Friday, Oct. 30, 2026 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
KARE 11 Investigates: Private prison was on sale for $75 million; ICE paid $495 million
Did an ICE prison overpayment cost taxpayers more than they lost from fraud in Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future scandal?
Additional Prison Sales
The Minnesota prison was just one of a series of sales CoreCivic made to the federal government this year.
On the same day CoreCivic announced the Minnesota sale, the company also sold its facility in Kansas for $238 million.
A month earlier, records show CoreCivic sold two prisons in California for a combined $1.5 billion.
The total bill for taxpayers for the four prisons: more than $2.2 billion.
In addition to profiting from the prison sales, CoreCivic has federal contracts which pay the company to operate the facilities.
At the Minnesota facility alone, CoreCivic estimates that it will earn approximately $75 million a year once the prison reaches full capacity.
Spending Questions
Federal auditors are raising questions about ICE’s prison-buying spree.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently found ICE’s detention facility purchases have “the potential to result in waste” because “ICE has not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities.”
Credit: KARE 11
U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan gorup, raises questions about ICE’s prison-buying spree.
The headline from the GAO’s September report reads: “Urgent Planning Needed to Avoid Further Waste of Taxpayer Dollars.”
In addition to questioning the prison purchases, the GAO also criticized ICE’s decision in early 2026 to spend $1.07 billion to buy 11 warehouses. ICE said it planned to convert them into detention centers - but quickly reversed course. By June, ICE was telling investigators it planned to sell seven of the 11 warehouses.
But, by then, the GAO found that ICE had spent over $20 million on costs it can't recover, such as utilities, security, and other services.
Unanswered Questions
Last week, KARE 11 asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for an interview about his department’s decision to buy the vacant Minnesota private prison.
We wanted to know how the federal government determined that taxpayers should pay more than six times the price CoreCivic had been asking for the Appleton facility - $495.6 million instead of the $75 million offer it made to Minnesota a year ago.
'Waste of our time' | Trump administration officials respond to KARE 11 investigation into prison sale
If there seems a disconnect between "Waste of our time" and Waste of taxpayer money per CoreCivic making out like multimillion dollar bandits, remember, it's Trump's people, and we all know what that means. And JD ducked out of the dog and pony thing, sending lowerlings.
When ICE wastes tons of taxpayer money it is money out the door just as if a Medicaid fraudster had done something illegal. The only difference is the amount of wasted taxpayer money.
This entire fraud thing is a smokescreen for having nothing else to say while $470 billion has ben wasted on a war Hegseth and Bibi appear to have lost. Prices skyrocket, and dog - pony is not quite an answer.
______________UPDATE____________
The dog and pony show is on YouTube, and it's a big time yawn until 38:45 in the thing, when the question of waste and abuse per ICE buying private prisons for inflated amounts is characterized by Bessant as "a waste of our time." They went to St. Cloud, did their dog-pony, and then the big time waste and abuse was dismissed by an insultingly dissmssive "waste of time" put down. A put down that only sharpened focus on the question and the extreme waste and abuse it entailed. JD sure looks smart for bailing on that thing that was boring in the main, and then went splat at the Q & A tail.
The backdrop said, "The Vice President's Fraud Task Force" but JD had the gile to bail.
_____________FURTHER UPDATE_______________
For a plain vanilla summary of events at the dog - pony show:
Crabgrass seemed to find more items online about the dismissal of the overpayment issue of multimillion dollar purchases of two firm's private prisons being bigger news than the event itself. However, the vanilla PiPress link is given in fairness to those conducting the event, such as it was.
