A former Obama administration spokesman now faces a felony charge in Minneapolis after prosecutors say he stole a coworker's debit card to feed a kratom habit, capping a swift fall from a nearly $200,000-a-year city post.
Adam Fetcher, 42, was formally charged Wednesday with one felony count of financial transaction fraud, Fox News Digital reported. Fetcher served as chief communications officer for the City of Minneapolis until early July, when the city fired him during a police investigation into allegations he had been rifling through coworkers' desks and bags for cash and bank cards.
Prosecutors allege Fetcher used the stolen cards to buy kratom, a plant-based substance with opioid-like effects, at Minneapolis smoke shops. Sources familiar with the matter told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the thefts began shortly after Fetcher returned from a rehabilitation program, and that he had previously told coworkers he was seeking treatment for a substance abuse problem.
The scope of the alleged theft, while modest by white-collar standards, is well-documented. Minneapolis police submitted a case file to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office detailing a possible felony for fraudulent credit card use totaling $481, Breitbart reported. Surveillance video allegedly shows Fetcher using a stolen card to make the purchases.
Three fellow city employees reported missing cash and cards. Fetcher was fired on July 1, and the case moved to the county attorney's office for charging consideration.
A spokesman for Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty confirmed the case "has been submitted for charging consideration and is currently under review," the Washington Examiner reported. That review ended with the felony charge filed this week.
Fetcher's attorney told Fox News Digital she had no comment. A representative for former President Barack Obama did not respond to a request for comment.
Fetcher's case is the latest in a string of legal troubles involving former Obama administration officials and Democratic political figures finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Fetcher's résumé reads like a progressive communications dream. He spent roughly eight months in 2011 as assistant press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, then moved to the Department of the Interior as press secretary until July 2012. He left that post to serve as deputy national press secretary on Obama's reelection campaign.
After the Obama years, Fetcher landed high-level communications jobs at Patagonia and Lyft before returning to government work in Minneapolis, where city records show he earned nearly $200,000 a year as the city's top communications staffer.
Court records indicate Fetcher had no criminal history before the alleged fraud, nothing beyond a few traffic violations. That clean record makes the charges all the more striking: a man trusted to speak for a presidential administration and a major American city allegedly could not keep his hands off a colleague's debit card.
Hamza Zamara, a store manager at a Minneapolis smoke shop, told reporters he confronted Fetcher directly about the suspicious purchases.
"We told him, Hey, we know what you're doing."
Zamara's account, first reported by Just The News, suggests the alleged scheme was not exactly sophisticated. A store clerk spotted what prosecutors and police apparently confirmed through surveillance footage and card records.
The felony charge lands at an uncomfortable moment for Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whose administration already faces scrutiny over widespread fraud tied to members of the city's Somali community. Frey has cultivated close political ties with that constituency, and the fraud scandals have drawn federal attention to City Hall's oversight failures.
Fetcher's case is separate from those broader fraud investigations, but the optics are corrosive. The man the city hired to manage its public image is now a defendant. Frey's administration paid him a salary approaching $200,000 to shape the city's message, and wound up with a police investigation, a firing, and a felony charge instead.
Former U.S. Attorney Joe Teirab appeared on Fox News' "America Reports" to argue that Frey should have to answer for the pattern of problems on his watch. The broader political context, a photo caption in Fox News coverage referenced both Frey and Governor Tim Walz as being "at the center of a federal probe into impeding law enforcement", only deepens the sense that Minneapolis governance is under serious strain.
Fetcher is not the only prominent Democratic figure facing legal jeopardy in recent months. The pattern extends well beyond Minneapolis.
A former mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in an FBI bribery sting, while California Governor Gavin Newsom has retained a high-profile defense attorney as a federal probe around his administration tightens.
Kratom occupies a legal gray area in most of the country. It is sold openly at smoke shops and gas stations, marketed as an herbal supplement, but the FDA has warned about its addictive properties and opioid-like effects. Fetcher allegedly spent hundreds of dollars on the substance at Minneapolis shops, using money and cards that did not belong to him.
The timeline raises pointed questions about City Hall's internal controls. Fetcher told coworkers he was seeking treatment for substance abuse. He attended a rehabilitation program. And then, shortly after returning to work, the alleged thefts began, from coworkers' desks and bags, in a government office building, by the city's chief communications officer.
No one in Minneapolis city government has publicly explained what safeguards, if any, were in place when Fetcher came back from rehab, or whether anyone flagged the risk. The New York Post noted that Fetcher held multiple high-profile roles before his Minneapolis tenure, making his alleged conduct all the more difficult to square with his professional history.
Federal investigators have also been probing Democratic officials in other states for corruption tied to substance-related industries, a sign that the intersection of political power and lax oversight is not unique to Minneapolis.
Fetcher is scheduled to appear in court on August 11. If convicted of the felony fraud charge, he faces consequences that would permanently mark a career built on managing other people's reputations.
His attorney has offered no public defense. The Obama camp has gone silent. And the city that hired him is left explaining how its own spokesman became a suspect.
Minneapolis taxpayers paid this man to tell the city's story. He wrote his own instead, and prosecutors say it belongs in a courtroom.