VP JD Vance- “Fraud became a massive problem”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Vice President JD Vance convened the first meeting of the Trump administration’s new federal Fraud Task Force on Friday, bringing together senior officials from across the administration for what he described as an aggressive effort to crack down on fraud in government benefits and services.
The meeting marked the formal launch of a multi-agency initiative aimed at identifying fraud, improving coordination across federal departments, and supporting prosecutions through the Department of Justice. The task force will be led by Andrew Ferguson, who addressed attendees following the Vice President’s opening remarks.
Opening the meeting, Vance said the administration is taking a far more serious approach to fraud than previous administrations.
“You’ve never had an administration that has really taken this seriously until the president put us, really from day one of the Trump administration, who said we have to take the fraud issue seriously,” Vance said.
He argued that anti-fraud protections had been weakened in recent years and said the administration now intends to restore them while taking what he called a “whole of government approach” to the issue.
“So much of what’s gonna make the anti-fraud task force work is the right people communicating across different departments,” Vance said. “We are going to stop the fraud that’s being committed against the American people.”
Vance said the effort is not just about protecting taxpayers, but also about ensuring that government services reach the people they are intended to help.
“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” he said. “This is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on.”
He pointed to alleged abuse within programs intended to help autistic children and their families, saying such fraud creates a double harm by both wasting taxpayer money and depriving vulnerable families of assistance they need.
“The more important tragedy is that you have families who need services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources,” Vance said.
Andrew Ferguson, who is leading the task force, thanked President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance for their support and said the administration views fraud as a threat not only to public finances but to public trust itself.
“Fraud treads on the social trust on which these programs and our entire nation depend,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson said Americans have supported government assistance programs for decades with the expectation that public funds would be used responsibly and that participants would act honestly.
“The American people feel like they are getting ripped off, and they’re right,” Ferguson said.
He added that fraud hurts the very people these programs are meant to serve.
“Every dollar diverted to a fake hospice or fake autism center, every dollar paid to a crooked hospital, deprives an American citizen who needs these essential services,” Ferguson said. “Fraud therefore wounds the neediest among us.”
Ferguson said the task force will focus on developing a national strategy to combat fraud across federal benefits programs and will assist the Department of Justice in prosecuting those responsible.
“Finally, we have a president who is doing something about this crisis,” Ferguson said. “We are here today because President Trump and Vice President Vance won’t ignore it.”
Senior adviser Stephen Miller also addressed the meeting, saying officials at the table were united in their determination to confront what he described as widespread abuse in government systems.
“Imagine a native Minnesotan who works as a lineman who is worried about his ability to provide for his family and he has a Somali refugee neighbor who arrived two years ago and has a Mercedes and never seems to go to work and gets unlimited free money for life.” Miller said.
“The people at this table are all united in an absolute determination to stop this plague of fraud, criminality and abuse,” Miller said.
Miller argued that many federal and state systems were built on the assumption that applicants were telling the truth, without sufficient verification in place to catch abuse before benefits were paid out.
“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” Miller said. “The reality is that there is not.”
He said the administration intends to change that, calling the current system unsustainable and corrosive to public confidence.
“That is the system that is being run. That is the corruption that this president’s leadership is going to demolish,” Miller said.
The meeting ended without questions from reporters, as officials said the group would move into a closed-door session to begin its work. Vance said more public updates on the task force’s progress are expected in the future.
“We’ve got allies across every major significant department,” Vance said. “We are going to stop the fraud that’s being committed against the American people.”
