On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance announced the creation of a new position within the Department of Justice (DOJ) with broad authority to investigate “fraud.”
The Trump administration has frequently cited fraud as a basis for cutting or undermining rights or benefits for U.S. residents — particularly fraud they assert is due to immigration. Recently, for example, the White House blocked $10 billion in federal expenditures for child care and other services in five Democratic-controlled states. Those states are now suing the administration to have the funds released.
In his statement, Vance said a person has already been selected for the position, but did not name them. He also said the person would serve in a deputy attorney general role.
“This is the person who is going to make sure we stop defrauding the American people,” Vance claimed, frequently invoking fraud in Minnesota that is being investigated by federal officials.
That fraud inquiry, however, was inspired in large part by debunked “reporting” from a right-wing YouTube personality, who alleged widespread fraud among Somali residents who are receiving federal funding to manage daycare centers. While fraud involving some federal monies has occurred, conservative social media channels have suggested that the scale of the fraud is far larger than it actually is.
Immigrant rights advocates worry that the new fraud investigations will give authorities license to even further target and harass immigrants. “They’re doing these visits at day care sites under the auspices of conducting a fraud investigation, but if they happen to see anyone who fits a profile, they might be arrested,” said Ana Pottratz Acosta at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Vance explained that the new deputy attorney general’s mission of rooting out supposed fraud would indeed begin in Minnesota, but would expand to other parts of the country.
“We’re looking into broad investigative authority, to a number of instances of wrongdoing that we’ve seen in Minneapolis,” Vance said, leaving specifics out of his statement. “We want to expand this.”
Vance also explained that the new position will have “nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud,” and that the individual would answer primarily to himself and to President Donald Trump.
The vice president alluded to the announcement in a Fox News interview earlier this week.
“I believe we’re gonna have some very big announcements in the next couple of days,” Vance said on Wednesday. “I don’t want to get ahead of the president, but we believe there is a nationwide fraud ring that’s rooted in illegal aliens and others taking advantage of the American welfare system.”
Vance has a sordid history of using immigrants as scapegoats to advance his political goals, even when allegations are overblown or, in many instances, are flat-out lies.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, for example, when Donald Trump peddled the racist lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets, Vance doubled down on the claim, eventually saying that he didn’t care if it was true or not, so long as it helped advance his agenda.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said.
The lies prompted multiple threats against residents in the city, including bomb threats, resulting in closures of public buildings and schools.
Media that fights fascism
Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump.
We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.