Trump announces ‘fraud’ crackdown in Democratic states as arrests begin in California | Donald Trump
Donald Trump announced a new crackdown on “fraud” in Democratic states and tapped J.D. Vance to lead the charge. Authorities quickly announced a series of arrests in California.
In Friday’s Truth Social post, the US president announced that the vice president is now “responsible for ‘fraud’ in the US,” claiming that the problem is “massive and widespread” and that Vance’s new role as “fraud czar” will be “a major factor in how great our country’s future will be.”
Trump said, without citing evidence, that Vance “will focus everywhere, but primarily on blue states where crooked Democratic politicians have a ‘free-for-all’ in an unprecedented theft of taxpayer money.”
He pointed to California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine and New York and said the alleged fraud was “so massive that if we were successful, we would literally be able to balance our American budget without providing evidence.”
“Raids have already begun in Los Angeles,” Trump said. Authorities arrested eight people for allegedly committing more than $50 million in health care fraud, mostly in southern California, federal authorities announced Thursday.
Many of the defendants, including healthcare professionals such as nurses and a psychologist, allegedly plotted to defraud Medicare by operating “sham” hospice care facilities in which they used non-terminally ill people as beneficiaries, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
This comes as the United States continues its war against Iran. It cost 12.7 billion dollars in its first six days. On Friday, the Trump administration also put forward a budget proposal that would see defense spending rise to the highest level in decades while other government programs face major cuts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies increasingly claim that blue states are complicit in fraud.
Last December, Trump froze federal child care funding to Minnesota because of such accusations. It also deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents heavily in the state during controversial immigration raids and widespread protests that resulted in the deaths of two Americans (Renee Good and Alex Pretti).
In February, Vance announced that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid funding to Minnesota as part of efforts to ensure the state is “a good steward of the American people’s tax money.”
Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, pushed back, saying at the time: “This has nothing to do with fraud.” He added: “The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. The Justice Department is gutting the U.S. attorney’s office and crippling their ability to investigate fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.”
Trump also previously claimed that “there is more fraud in California than in Minnesota.”
In recent months, the Trump administration has argued that Southern California is rife with health care fraud and has vowed to crack down on the issue while often using the issue politically to criticize the state’s Democratic leadership. Nearly all of the cases cited by the Justice Department in its wave of arrests under “Operation Never Die” were linked to southern California.
“The Southern California region is a high-risk environment for nursing home-related and many other health care frauds,” said FBI deputy director Akil Davis, claiming that the United States loses “hundreds of billions of dollars annually from health care fraud.”
In response to the news, Gavin Newsom defended his state, saying California had taken action. The governor said he banned new hospice licenses in 2021, the state has revoked more than 280 licenses since 2024 and is pursuing more than 100 criminal cases.
“The Trump Administration, home to the world’s biggest fraudsters, is trying to blame California for problems with THEIR federal programs,” Newsom said. “I am pleased to see that just 15 months after Trump took office, the Fed is finally taking fraud in the programs they manage seriously.”
At a news conference announcing the arrests, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said his agency plans to inspect every nursing home in California.
In response to Trump’s statement, Jen Goodman, a spokeswoman for New York Governor Kathy Hochul, told the Guardian: “Long before the Trump administration took office, Governor Hochul was leading efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse, including sweeping reforms that have saved taxpayers over $2 billion. As always, New York is pleased to partner with the federal government to continue our work, but not for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s tax-cut efforts.” “We will not stand by and watch him use ‘fraud’ as a mask.” divert health care and critical programs away from New York’s most vulnerable.
The Guardian has contacted the governor’s offices of Illinois, Minnesota and Maine for comment.
Since taking office last January, Trump has granted presidential pardons to dozens of people convicted of white-collar crimes, including several people convicted of fraud.
Meanwhile, earlier this week Trump said in his primetime speech: in question: “We are fighting wars. We can’t handle daycare,” and adds: “We can’t handle individual jobs like daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, they can do that on a state-by-state basis.”
