In November 2025, Hennepin County Judge Sarah West overturned a unanimous jury verdict convicting Abdifatah Yusuf of aiding and abetting theft in a $7.2 million Medicaid fraud scheme involving his home healthcare company, Promise Health Services. West ruled the state failed to exclude reasonable inferences of Yusuf’s innocence, such as his brother allegedly committing the fraud without his knowledge.
However, Experts deemed the post-verdict acquittal highly unusual, especially in white-collar cases. Minnesota AG Keith Ellison has appealed, and the controversial woke judge is now currently under state Supreme Court review over her bizarre and worrying decision.
Reacting to the case, University of Minnesota law professor JaneAnne Murray broke down the details in comments to Fox News Digital. “It is highly unusual for a judge to reject a jury’s verdict in any case, much less a white-collar one, where issues of intent will almost always be circumstantial,” she said, “The judge in the Medicaid fraud case was applying the current law.”
For context, Judge Sarah West claimed in her controversial ruling on the fraud case that, “There is a reasonable, rational inference that Mr. Yusuf was the owner … but that his brother, Mohamed Yusuf, was committing the fraud … without Mr. Yusuf’s knowledge or involvement.”
Continuing her poor reasoning, the judge claimed, “The Court is concerned about the fraud that occurred at Promise. The way this case was presented and the failure by the State to actually connect the dots, even through clear inference from circumstantial evidence, that Mr. Yusuf knowingly assisted in the fraud is more than concerning,” adding, “The trier of fact, and this Court upon review, should not be in a place of having to dig through and work to interpret the volumes of evidence to establish the State’s case.”
In any case, also annoyed with the ruling, Andy McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney and a Fox News contributor, expressed his problems with the controversial judge and her bizarre ruling in comments to Fox News Digital. “It is highly unusual for a judge to overturn a jury verdict in a criminal case,” McCarthy wrote.
Digging into the details, he offered further information on her unusual ruling and the unsound legal basis for it. “The fact that a case is circumstantial — meaning there is no central witness who saw the crime — is not a reason to overturn it,” the legal expert noted.
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Next, Andy McCarthy said, “Very often, circumstantial cases are much stronger than cases that rise or fall on the testimony of witnesses of dubious credibility. The judge is only permitted to vacate a guilty verdict if it is obviously irrational and against the full weight of the evidence.”
Rounding out the condemnation to Fox News Digital, Republican Minnesota Sen. Michael Holmstrom labeled her a “true extremist” and “unprecedented.” Likewise, Jury Foreperson Ben Walfoort said to Fox News Digital, “I was ‘shocked’ by West’s decision,” and explained that “the jury’s conclusion “was not a difficult decision whatsoever.”
Additionally, Republican Minnesota State Representative Kristin Robbins noted, for the same Fox News Digital article, “I was surprised to see the judge overturned a jury’s guilty verdict & acquit a defendant in a $7.2 million fraud case involving Medicaid. I will be looking at ways to strengthen state law so fraud cases can be successfully prosecuted in state court.”
Watch Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent comment on Ilhan Omar’s ties to the fraud scandal here: