Is Fighting Fraud Now Partisan?
More than a dozen state attorneys general (AGs) met with Vice President J.D. Vance at a Tuesday meeting of the Trump administration’s anti-fraud roundtable, but not one of them was a Democrat. “Democratic AGs were invited to that same meeting, and it won’t surprise you that none of them attended,” declared Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R), who plans to participate in the initiative, on “Washington Watch”. The Democratic AGs not only avoided the event, but 23 of them even signed a public letter declaring that they would not.
“This absolutely should be an issue of concern to everyone,” warned FRC’s Jody Hice. Has fighting fraud now become a partisan issue?
The excuse offered in the letter was that Democrats did not believe the meeting was a “serious” discussion, and they were not given enough advance notice. “While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions, the invitation was provided with less than one business day’s notice with no agenda,” the letter complained. “With appropriate notice and a genuine opportunity for engagement, we would welcome the chance to participate in a future meeting and contribute to a productive dialogue.”
This complaint is not entirely without merit. According to an unnamed official cited by CNBC, invites were originally sent out only to Republican AGs. Apparently, whoever was responsible for organizing the meeting believed that fighting fraud was a partisan issue Democrats would not care about.
However, on Friday before the holiday weekend, Vice President Vance personally insisted that invitations be sent to Democrats too.
“This should not be a partisan effort,” Vance declared before the meeting. “Everybody should care about fraud. Everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers money, and importantly, everybody should care about actually protecting the programs that only work and are only properly funded.”
But Democratic AGs chose to take offense at not originally receiving an invitation, rather than reciprocating Vance’s magnanimity to intervene on their behalf.
A last-minute (or last-business-day) invitation could provide a justification for some state AGs to skip the meeting. Some, like Marshall, likely had scheduling conflicts (although very few scheduling conflicts outweigh an invitation from the White House). Some, like AGs on the West Coast, could plead that the travel burden made the trip not worth the effort — not without time to schedule other East Coast meetings.
But many of the letter’s signatories are located much closer to Washington, D.C. than the West Coast. The letter was signed by the Democratic AGs of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and even the AG of D.C. itself. Instead of spending time adjusting their schedules to fit in a quick trip to the White House, these officials instead chose to spend their time drafting a letter to declare that they would not participate and circulating it for signatures. Several Democratic AGs even organized a press conference that afternoon to counter-program the event.
These factors suggest that the short notice was not the only reason — perhaps not even the main reason — why Democratic AGs organized a collective boycott of the anti-fraud roundtable.
What other possible reasons present themselves? These elected officials could be executing the common Democratic strategy of instinctively opposing any action the Trump administration tries to take — even to the point of being uncooperative on fraud prevention. Or they could be trying to avoid the embarrassment of showing up unprepared to a meeting where their own state’s fraud failure was on the agenda. There might be other reasons, but both of these are highly plausible.
The reason is the Trump administration’s narrative and focus on combatting fraud. This began with the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) highly publicized audits of government books. Those investigations found some substantial savings, although their results did not quite live up to the hype.
Since then, however, the Trump administration has continued to root out waste, fraud, and abuse through individual government departments, which are looking carefully at their expenses.
With the help of intrepid independent journalists, this focus on fraud blew open the Minnesota welfare fraud scandal late last year, which uncovered systematic fraud by Somali immigrants running fake daycares. In just one fraud scheme, Somali immigrants stole approximately $250 million in federal welfare dollars. But nearly 100 individuals were charged across multiple schemes.
The investigation spread beyond Minnesota and beyond the Somali community. By the end of 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice had charged 265 individuals with fraud, worth an alleged $15 billion in health care alone, and they had secured 235 convictions, either through guilty pleas or trials.
Early this year, President Trump tapped Vice President Vance to head up an anti-fraud task force. That group is now looking at fraud in at least 14 state welfare programs totaling a potential $9 billion. Additionally, Vance said the task force had referred $22 billion in potentially fraudulent small business loans to the Treasury Department and deferred $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from states (like California) that had failed to sufficiently cooperate with fighting fraud.
Of course, some fraud is neither systematic nor narrative-building. Sometimes, fraud is simply a result of sinful human beings deciding it is easy to steal from the public — until they get caught. Earlier this month, a former CIA analyst with top-secret clearance was arrested for defrauding the U.S. government in a number of ways. He falsified the details of his Navy service record, claimed 744 hours of paid time off for active military service for a decade after his discharge, and scammed his agency for millions in “work-related expenses.” Federal investigators found $40 million in gold bars, $2 million in cash, and 35 luxury watches in his home.
Examples like this one show fraud for what it is: someone who seeks to enrich himself by stealing from the government. It is little different from insider trading and almost the same thing as an elected official embezzling public funds.
“This should not be a political issue,” Marshall maintained. “When someone is stealing taxpayer dollars, that should be one [thing] that both Democrats and Republicans can unite around.”
Unfortunately, some public officials seem reluctant to unite around this principle. After citizen journalists like Nick Shirley began to uncover welfare fraud in California of the scope and nature of the fraud he had uncovered in Minnesota, the U.S. DOJ in April formed a West Coast strike force in its fraud division to focus on the Westernmost states.
But California didn’t want to play along. It’s unclear whether state officials meant to save themselves the embarrassment of being shown for dupes, or whether they believe the fraud should continue because the beneficiaries are illegal immigrants (and, in some twisted version of Marxism, their theft is therefore justified).
On Wednesday, the California Assembly passed a bill to ban photographing or video-recording employees of nonprofit organizations without their consent. This seems similar to the law Kamala Harris used 10 years ago to prosecute David Daleiden for exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts. The difference is that it expands penalties.
The bill also seems suspiciously timed and targeted to suppress the type of journalism Nick Shirley and others have used to expose, for instance, daycare and at-home care nonprofits that don’t actually provide any services, but bill the government anyway. Critics of the legislation have dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”
The good news is, Democratic state AGs do recognize they have a duty to combat fraud, and their letter to Vance at least acknowledges the nobility of the objective. Marshall expressed “hope” that his Democratic counterparts would come around to cooperate with the administration.
“It’s their legal responsibility, as the chief law enforcement officers of their state, to not only ensure that taxpayer money is spent appropriately, but also hold those accountable who violate the laws,” he said. “My hope is that they will see the wisdom of that. But yet we haven’t obviously seen a whole lot of action in Minnesota or in California yet.”
“We have a responsibility [to] the taxpayers of this country to root out waste, fraud, and abuse,” Marshall added. “We know what’s going on in the system. This administration has made it a priority, and we stand with them looking forward to best practices delivering results to the people across the country.”
The question is whether, in the age of Trump, even fighting fraud has become an issue divided along partisan battle lines. It should not matter whether the fraud is perpetrated by foreign nationals. What should matter is whether U.S. taxpayers are getting bilked out of billions by people leeching off the public coffers. In the eyes of the Left, though, the former question seems to get more attention than the latter.
AUTHOR
Joshua Arnold
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.
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