“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” Vance said. “It is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on.”
President Donald Trump, a Republican, has made a crackdown on fraud a central part of his domestic agenda as voters have expressed concern about affordability ahead of November’s midterm elections. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.
Vance cited some of the Minnesota allegations on Friday. Last month, he held a news conference to announce a temporary halt of some Medicaid funding until the state took actions that federal officials said would address their concerns.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who faced Vance as a vice presidential candidate in 2024, has called it a “campaign of retribution” and said the Trump administration was “weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota.”
The task force is also the most visible assignment to date that Trump has given to Vance, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
Vance and the task force, which includes about half the president’s Cabinet, the leader of a new Justice Department division focused on prosecuting fraud and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, are set to meet regularly to look at rooting out potential fraud and waste in federal benefit programs.
Ferguson, who is vice chair of the task force, cast the issue of fraud as a dire crisis facing the country and said it “shreds the social trust on which these programs and our entire nation depend.”
“This fraud crisis is thus existential," he said. “If we fail to address it, the fabric of our nation will swiftly unravel.”
Joining the task force was Colin McDonald, a top aide to the Justice Department’s second in command. He was recently confirmed as the assistant attorney general overseeing the department’s new division focused on prosecuting fraud.
The Justice Department has long prosecuted fraud nationally through its Criminal Division, but the Trump administration says the new division is needed to crack down on rampant fraud.
The Justice Department under the Biden administration brought a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, accusing dozens of defendants, most of Somali descent, of exploiting a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.
The investigations into the fraud there expanded, with a lead prosecutor estimating that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.
That prosecutor who had been leading the sprawling fraud investigation there under the Biden and Trump administrations was among those who resigned from the Justice Department amid frustration with the department’s response to the fatal shootings of civilians by federal agents in Minneapolis.
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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.