*Appoints VP Vance As Fraud Czar
US President Donald Trump has announced a fresh crackdown on fraud in Democratic states and tapped Vice President (VP) JD Vance to lead the charge.
Officials swiftly announced a string of arrests in California.
In a Truth Social post today, the President announced that his VP is now “in charge of ‘fraud’ in the United States”, claiming the problem is “massive and pervasive” and that Vance’s new role as “fraud czar” will be “a major factor in how great the future of our country will be.”
Trump said that Vance would focus on “everywhere but primarily in those blue states where crooked Democrat politicians…have had a ‘free for all’ in the unprecedented theft of taxpayer money.”
He pointed to California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine and New York, and alleged fraud is “so large that, if successful, we would literally be able to balance our American budget.”
“Raids have already started in L.A.,” Trump said.
Authorities arrested eight people for allegedly perpetrating over $50m in healthcare fraud, largely in southern California, federal officials announced on Thursday.
Most of the accused, which include healthcare professionals such as nurses and a psychologist, allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by running “sham” hospice care facilities where they used people who were not terminally ill as beneficiaries, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.
It comes as the US remains engaged in a war on Iran that cost $12.7bn in its first six days.
The Trump administration today also put forward a budget proposal under which defense spending would surge to its highest level in decades, while other government programs would face steep cuts.
Allies of Trump are meanwhile increasingly alleging that blue states are complicit in fraud.
Last December, Trump froze federal childcare funding to Minnesota over such accusations.
He has also heavily deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the state amid controversial immigration raids which resulted in the killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as widespread protests.
In February, Vance announced that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid funds to Minnesota as part of efforts to ensure the state was a “good steward of the American people’s tax money.”
Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, pushed back at the time, saying: “This has nothing to do with fraud.
“The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. His DoJ (Department of Justice) is gutting the US Attorney’s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.”
*PHOTO CAPTION: Trump speaking during an official function.
