The White House announced Thursday a new assistant attorney general position to combat the kind of widespread taxpayer fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota and elsewhere.
The nominee for the new position will be announced in the coming days, Vice President J.D. Vance said at a White House press briefing, adding that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has promised a “swift” confirmation process.
“We are creating a new assistant attorney general position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud,” Vance said. “Now, of course, that person’s efforts will start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort, because, unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.”
Vance noted fraud is rampant in places like California and his home state of Ohio.
He also called for Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., to resign because “it’s very clear either that he knew about the fraud of Minneapolis, he knew about the welfare fraud, or at the very least he looked the other way.”
“I mean, this is not, this is not like Lex Luthor, right? This is not movie villain fraud. This is the lowest IQ possible fraud,” he added. “Tim Walz, either it was unbelievable incompetence or he was in on the fraud. That’s one of the things we’re gonna get to the bottom of.”
According to Vance, the administration has already been working extensively to combat fraud of this kind for months, but after deliberation, the White House decided the best way to streamline those efforts was to create a new division at the Department of Justice.
Vance said the administration has “activated a major interagency task force” because multiple different programs are being defrauded, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the Department of Agriculture, education dollars, federal money for daycare, and much more.
The Department of Justice has issued more than 1,500 subpoenas to “get to the heart of the fraud ring,” along with nearly 100 indictments of “mostly Somali immigrants, but also a few others,” Vance said, adding agents are going door-to-door to investigate fraud.
“If you’re a young parent struggling to afford childcare in the United States of America, there are programs that we have to make it easier for your kids to get a daycare, for your kids to get in preschool,” Vance said. “Those programs should go to American citizens, not be defrauded by Somali immigrants and others.”
Vance acknowledged calls for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate the fraud, but said the reason the administration decided to create the new assistant attorney general position is that there is inherent constitutional weakness in a special counsel that a Senate-confirmed position does not have.
“It has all the benefits, all the resources, all the authority of a special counsel, but with two crucial differences: Number one, it will be run out of the White House under the supervision of me and the president United States, and number two, it’s actually constitutionally legitimate,” he said. “When we get the bad guys, we want to make sure we get them permanently and they don’t have some legal technicality they can get out of, which is why we set it up as an [assistant] attorney general.”
Vance used the example of former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the get-Trump lawfare spook whose appointment was found to be unconstitutional, saying, “completely aside from all the other issues — that the person was a lunatic and that the case had no merit — there was a fundamental constitutional issue, which is that he had not been appointed by the president and he had not been confirmed by the United States Senate.”
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
