President Donald Trump has signed an executive order establishing an anti-fraud task force headed by Vice President JD Vance.
Andrew Ferguson, head of the FTC, will serve as vice chairman.
Mr. President, this is a very important whole of government approach to tackle the fraud problem. And let me just tell one story.One of the things that even before this executive order was signed, that we were able to stop under the President’s leadership is we saw evidence that in Minneapolis there were Somalis, primarily illegal immigrants, who are defrauding a Medicaid program that was meant to go to autistic children. So they were taking children who were supposed to get benefits, and they were claiming that their kids were actually autistic, even though they weren’t.And what did this mean? This meant two things.Number one, you had a lot of people getting rich off of the fraud while American citizens got poor. And the second thing that it meant is that you had autistic kids in Minneapolis, in suburban Minneapolis, who weren’t getting benefits they needed because Somali fraudsters were literally stealing out of their pocket.It’s got to stop. And unfortunately, that kind of fraud is one example of probably hundreds just within the state of Minnesota, and then it’s repeated and replayed all over the United States of America.When we first started talking about this problem, the President made it very clear he wanted us to take the fraud problem seriously because nobody had until he was president.We started to figure out one big hole that existed is that the agencies of the government weren’t actually talking to each other, so Treasury would have evidence of financial fraud, but wasn’t talking to the Department of Justice about it. Health and Human Services had evidence of Medicaid fraud, but wasn’t talking to Department of Treasury about it.So what this executive order does is force the entire apparatus of the federal government to do two things: stop the fraud in the American taxpayer and make sure that the benefits that ought, by right, go to American citizens, go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters.Andrew Ferguson will be the vice chair, and is going to do a great job.
Vance first spoke about the task force in January.
The fraud came to light in November when Minnesota DHS whistleblowers accused Gov. Tim Walz of enabling widespread fraud.
One prosecutor believes Medicaid fraud could top $9 billion within 14 services in Minnesota.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson also said the “fraud in Minnesota outpaces that of other states.”
Others discovered fake daycare centers established by Somalis.
The Trump administration also halted some Medicaid funds to Minnesota due to fraud concerns.
Trump described those who have ignored fraud as crooked because it makes them money and gives them power:
They use it for power, like with the Somalians. They vote in a block, 100% they make a deal with the Somalians. They all vote because they’re on a gravy train. It’s coming in. It’s money first, then power second. A lot of people say power first. Now, it’s money first, power second. Do you ever see where, like Mercedes! People come over from somewhere, they have no money, and now they’re buying Mercedes Benz cars. Okay? More cash goes out of the Minnesota airport than any other place in the world. We’re going to find it. And Minnesota is really bad. The governor is corrupt. The Attorney General is totally corrupt, just like the New York State Attorney General, Leticia James, she’s a highly corrupt person. Bragg the DA is a corrupt person. They’re all corrupt. These are corrupt people, and we got too many of them in our country, and we have to expose them, and we have to catch them.
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