Vance holds first meeting of a new anti-fraud task force targeting
benefit programs
[March 28, 2026]
By MICHELLE L. PRICE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Friday held the inaugural
meeting of a new anti-fraud task force he’s leading as the Trump
administration seeks to show it’s cracking down on potential misuse of
social programs.
Vance, speaking Friday before the task force held a closed-door meeting,
said that the federal government, for decades, had not taken the issue
of fraud seriously and that it needed to be tackled with “a
whole-government approach.”
“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” Vance said.
“It is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely
on.”
President Donald Trump, a Republican, has made a crackdown on fraud a
central part of his domestic agenda as voters have expressed concern
about affordability ahead of November’s midterm elections. That effort
comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by
Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown
in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.
Vance cited some of the Minnesota allegations on Friday. Last month, he
held a news conference to announce a temporary halt of some Medicaid
funding until the state took actions that federal officials said would
address their concerns.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who faced Vance as a vice
presidential candidate in 2024, has called it a “campaign of
retribution” and said the Trump administration was “weaponizing the
entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like
Minnesota.”
The task force is also the most visible assignment to date that Trump
has given to Vance, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential
candidate.
Vance and the task force, which includes about half the president’s
Cabinet, the leader of a new Justice Department division focused on
prosecuting fraud and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson,
are set to meet regularly to look at rooting out potential fraud and
waste in federal benefit programs.
Ferguson, who is vice chair of the task force, cast the issue of fraud
as a dire crisis facing the country and said it “shreds the social trust
on which these programs and our entire nation depend.”
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Vice President JD Vance, chair of the newly formed Task Force to
Eliminate Fraud, arrives for the task force's first meeting in the
Indian Treaty Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on
the White House complex in Washington, Friday, March 27, 2026. (AP
Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
“This fraud crisis is thus existential," he said. “If we fail to
address it, the fabric of our nation will swiftly unravel.”
Joining the task force was Colin McDonald, a top aide to the Justice
Department’s second in command. He was recently confirmed as the
assistant attorney general overseeing the department’s new division
focused on prosecuting fraud.
The Justice Department has long prosecuted fraud nationally through
its Criminal Division, but the Trump administration says the new
division is needed to crack down on rampant fraud.
The Justice Department under the Biden administration brought a
massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit
Feeding Our Future, accusing dozens of defendants, most of Somali
descent, of exploiting a state-run, federally funded program
intended to provide food for children.
The investigations into the fraud there expanded, with a lead
prosecutor estimating that half or more of the roughly $18 billion
in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018
may have been stolen.
That prosecutor who had been leading the sprawling fraud
investigation there under the Biden and Trump administrations was
among those who resigned from the Justice Department amid
frustration with the department’s response to the fatal shootings of
civilians by federal agents in Minneapolis.
___
Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this
report.
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