Vice President J.D. Vance, who leads the White House anti-fraud task force, has referred allegations of collusion around fraud in Minnesota to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, which also involves Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
The criminal referral stems from a House Oversight Committee report on an ongoing investigation that alleges “alerts to the fraud were escalated to senior levels of Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible red flags emerged.”
In a letter to Vance on Sunday detailing the report, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer encouraged the vice president’s task force to “direct appropriate executive branch agencies to conduct a thorough review of all Minnesota social service program integrity measures, oversight processes, reimbursements and enrollments from 2019 to the present.”
Vance posted on Monday night that he had referred the allegations against top state officials to the Justice Department’s fraud division, which is run by Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald.
“Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and informed whistleblowers, they will face justice,” Vance said on X.
The fraud allegations placed intense pressure on Walz, a former Democratic vice presidential nominee who was running for a third term as governor. Although he denied Republican allegations that his administration ignored financial abuse, Walz announced in January that he was abandoning his reelection campaign.
CNN has contacted Walz and Ellison’s office for comment on the criminal referral and for any comment on the House Oversight Committee report.
Allegations of fraud in Minnesota again made national headlines late last year, when a 23-year-old conservative content creator claimed on YouTube, with little evidence, that Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota were fraudulently taking money to provide child care for low-income families. The video, which received millions of views, was promoted by Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The allegations reignited anger and outrage among the Trump administration and state GOP leaders, who sought to put a halt to the spending of taxpayer dollars for social services they said were never provided.
In an interview with Fox News last month, Vance, who has been dubbed the administration’s “fraud czar,” hinted that criminal referrals could be coming to top state officials, including in California, Minnesota and other states.
“When I hear about a report that says to the governor, there’s all this fraud here, and he doesn’t do anything about it. I ask myself, was anybody involved in criminal wrongdoing? Was anybody’s office involved in criminal wrongdoing? Again, I’m not going to say yes, but I’m going to promise the American people that we’re going to look at that thing, we’re going to investigate it, and we’re going to take it seriously, because if there’s any criminal wrongdoing So people should do that. Go to jail for this,” Vance told Kaleigh McEnany at the time.
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