Trump Announces Vance-Led ‘War on Fraud’

President Donald Trump has declared a “war on fraud” and said Vice President JD Vance would lead that effort.

During his State of the Union address to Congress on Feb. 24, Trump said, “I am officially announcing the war on fraud,” and asserted that “if we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget.”

He then said Vance would lead the effort before he singled out Minnesota as a hotbed of fraud, referring to dozens of fraud cases prosecuted there by federal lawyers over the past several years.

“The Somali pirates who ransack Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” he said, adding that illegal immigration and open borders have played a role in fraudulent activity.

As Trump was speaking, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was in the House chamber, shouted at the president.

The president also suggested that California, Massachusetts, and Maine could see enforcement activity.

“We will take care of this problem. We’re going to take care of this problem,” he said. “We are not playing games.”

Upon taking office in January 2025, the second Trump administration pledged to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force led by Elon Musk until the tech billionaire left the government last spring.

Starting in December 2025, several federal department and agency heads said they would ratchet up fraud investigations in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he sent notices about investigations into several money service businesses in Minnesota related to alleged Somali fraud schemes and is “requiring enhanced reporting of certain international transactions which can accelerate prosecutions and the recovery of laundered funds.”

In the midst of a federal immigration operation in Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her agency would be investigating fraud. She wrote on X that officers would be “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.”

Following the agent-involved shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis in January, border czar Tom Homan announced a pullback of officers from the state. Later, he said that a small security force would remain as federal officials continued investigating fraud allegations.

Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told The Epoch Times’ Jan Jekielek in January that his agency found that fraud in Minnesota had reached the highest levels of the state government. Separately, he told Fox News that there would be efforts to audit the state in a bid to claw back federal funding.

The actions came after years of investigation that began with the $300 million scheme at the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said in a statement that his administration has worked to stop fraud in the state and suggested that COVID-19-related policies that were established by Congress during the first Trump administration led to higher instances of fraud.

“But we have learned from this—as we would hope any administration would. And it does not need to be a partisan issue. But anyone can call fire. I hope to see those calls from my Republican colleagues paired with serious, thoughtful ideas to aid our efforts in putting it out,” he said last month.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.