Vice President JD Vance, the Trump administration’s newly dubbed “Fraud Czar,” revealed he has formally referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the Department of Justice for a criminal fraud investigation.

The breaking news came during an interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News, just after a damning House Oversight Committee staff report exposed how Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison knew for SIX YEARS about massive fraud in Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs yet did nothing, partly because they didn’t want to be called “racist” for targeting schemes heavily involving the Somali community.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, senior officials in the Walz administration were repeatedly warned about rampant fraud in Medicaid and child nutrition programs as early as 2019–2020.

They had the clear legal authority to suspend payments to suspected fraudsters immediately — no court order required — but chose to keep the money flowing.

The report detailed retaliation against whistleblowers who raised alarms, including intimidation, threats of surveillance, and efforts to silence them rather than fix the problems. Billions of dollars were at risk, including potentially $9 billion in Medicaid fraud and $300 million in federal child nutrition funds tied to scandals like the massive Feeding Our Future racket.

Now VP Vance is taking it to the next level.

During the interview, host Jesse Watters laid out the damning reality of the House Oversight report, noting that Walz intentionally allowed massive bleeding of federal funds because he was terrified of political incorrectness.

Vance didn’t hold back, confirming that the Trump-Vance administration is taking the rule of law seriously and will aggressively pursue deep-state negligence and state-level corruption.

Vance went on to announce that the Trump administration has formally referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the Department of Justice for a full criminal fraud investigation.

Jesse Watters:
So you’re the fraud czar now. House Oversight just came out with a report that said Tim Walz was warned repeatedly that there was fraud, and he kept the money flowing because he didn’t want to be called racist. That sounds like a crime to me. Is that a crime?

VP JD Vance:
Well, I’m going to let the law determine what’s a crime and what’s not. We’re certainly going to investigate this, Jesse.

And I guess now I can make a bit of breaking news, because I left the White House to come here to do this interview with you. Before I did, we actually referred this particular case to the Department of Justice for a full criminal investigation.

We are not going to do what the Biden administration did and make judgments of the law before all the facts are in.

But here’s what’s particularly troubling about this to me, Jesse: you had people within Governor Walz’s office who were saying, “You know what? This looks like fraud. It looks like these Somali illegal immigrants are doing something that’s very shady.”

And then you had people who shut them down—who shut these whistleblowers down—and said, “You’re a racist” or “You’re a xenophobe” for asking questions about where taxpayer money is going.

What that means to me, Jesse, is that clearly people weren’t taking fraud seriously. Whether it rises to the level of a criminal violation, we’re going to investigate it. And, of course, if it does rise to that level, we’re going to prosecute it. We have to.

WATCH:

Jim Hᴏft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

You can email Jim Hᴏft here, and read more of Jim Hᴏft's articles here.