CBS—under its new owners, the Ellison family—along with the Murdoch trinity of Fox News, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, have covered the story aggressively, at times picking up unconfirmed accounts from conservative influencers that have spun into wild charges about vote-buying and cover-ups.

The New York Times provided front-page coverage to a Sunday news story echoing key arguments made in Trump administration talking points: that a Nordic-style welfare state in Minnesota, combined with criminal tendencies inherent to the state’s Somali population, created an environment ripe for fraud. The Times also focuses on the defendants’ claims that they were being persecuted for racial reasons.

But a Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) review has found that the administration’s preferred narrative has been advanced in widespread coverage by corporate media outlets.