Controversial Senate candidate Graham Platner (D., Maine), hoisting a "Solidarity" sign and protest fist, marched with Maine Somalis last month to show support for Minnesota’s Somali community, which has been implicated in a staggering fraud scandal. Ironically, one of Platner’s comrades at the event, Safiya Khalid, served as a top official at a Maine nonprofit under investigation for defrauding the state out of millions of dollars in health care payments.
Platner, who is running in a hotly contested primary race for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R.), was the marquee headliner of a Dec. 13 event in Lewiston organized by Khalid, 30, a headscarf-wearing, Somali-born former leader at Gateway Community Services Maine. Platner—a self-described communist who once sported a neo-Nazi tattoo and is under fire for offensive online comments he made about black and gay people—marched alongside Khalid and spoke at a rally of Somali-American residents, labor leaders, and political activists.
"Safiya, thank you. All of us would not be here without your organizing skills," said Platner. "We are in your debt."
For a small state, Maine has a large Somali population of up to 10,000 people. "Mainers know that the Somali community is part of the state of Maine," said Platner, who accused President Donald Trump and Republicans of disparaging the state’s sizable Somali community.
During a visit to Portland during the 2016 campaign, Trump pointed out that Maine had become "a major destination" for Somali migrants and connected them to rising crime in the area. More recently—late last month—he repeatedly criticized Minnesota’s Somali community.
Khalid, who’s been compared to far-left congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) at an earlier career stage, organized last month’s rally in Lewiston in response to what she said was Trump’s "targeting of Somali Americans." It came after Trump had weighed in on a fraud ring led largely by Somali-American nonprofit groups in Minnesota that defrauded the state out of billions of dollars in food program and health services payments. Federal prosecutors believe the Somali-linked scams may have stolen half of the $18 billion Minnesota received since 2018 for various government programs. The ballooning scandal was behind embattled Gov. Tim Walz’s (D.) announcement Monday that he will not seek a third term next year.
Gateway Community Services Maine, where Khalid worked from 2019 to 2022, is facing allegations of financial misdeeds similar to the fraud in Minnesota. Congressional and federal authorities launched investigations last month into Gateway Community Services Maine, a nonprofit that provides "wraparound services"—health care, job search, and social services—to immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers.
The state of Maine has also probed Gateway’s finances, discovering more than $662,000 in overpayments through the Maine Department of Health and Human Services from 2015 to 2018, according to local reports.
Days after Platner and Khalid’s Lewiston event, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested Treasury Department records for Gateway Community Services Maine and other nonprofit groups. And late last month, Department of Homeland Security agents visited several locations affiliated with Gateway Community Services.
While Khalid has not yet been accused of wrongdoing, she worked at Gateway Community Services Maine when the organization’s fraud of the state’s MaineCare system kicked into high gear, according to former Gateway Community Services billing specialist Christopher Bernardini.
Bernardini told Maine-based reporter Steve Robinson last year that Gateway Community Services, where he worked from 2018 to 2025, bilked MaineCare out of millions of dollars by falsifying client service records and billing the state for them. According to Bernardini, Gateway Community Services, which received $28.8 million in MaineCare payments from 2019 to 2024, defrauded the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by hiring no-show staffers and providing bonuses with funds from the program.
According to federal records, Gateway Community Services Maine and its affiliated organization, Gateway Community Services, received $700,000 under PPP.
Gateway Community Services Maine touted Khalid as one of a "dynamic duo" hired in 2019, and cited her work on Gateway’s "Covid-19 Youth Coalition." Khalid has maintained ties to the organization since leaving in 2022. Khalid founded Community Organizing Alliance, a "civic engagement group" that shares the same office address as Gateway Community Services. Gateway Community Services founder Abdullahi Ali served as a member of Community Organizing Alliance. Khalid was hired as a policy and outreach specialist for the state of Maine in April 2024.
"I just couldn’t fathom it—I thought we were helping people; I thought this was all on the up-and-up," Bernardini said last month, comparing the scheme to the $1 billion fraud in Minnesota, where a network of nonprofit groups falsely claimed to have provided food and health care services to immigrants and refugees.
While Platner has more recently cozied up to people at the epicenter of the potential fraud, the scandal is also likely to ensnare the frontrunner in the Senate primary, Gov. Janet Mills (D.).
Mills, who is running against Platner and several other Mainers, has been photographed with Ali, the Gateway Community founder, the Maine Wire reported. Ali, a Somali-American, drew scrutiny, beyond allegations of financial misdeeds, over his failed campaign last year for president of Jubaland, a violence-torn, semi-autonomous region of Somalia. According to the Maine Wire, Ali bragged in interviews in Somalia that he bankrolled an armed militia to depose Jubaland’s leader.
