Trump Claims To Fight Fraud While Pardoning Fraudsters | Gary Peters Exposes The Hypocrisy

[00:00:00]Senator Peters.

[00:00:05]>> Mr. Letter Godot, as you know, President Trump fired 19 Inspectors General, the independent watchdogs that tasked by Congress with fighting waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs. On May 21, 2025, I issued a report that revealed that in 20 or in fiscal year 24 alone, those fired IGs had collectively identified over 50 billion dollars of government savings through their work.

[00:00:35]Since then, President Trump has fired additional IGs and has cut funding and staff to the oversight agencies, some by more than a third.

[00:00:44]So, my question for you, sir, is do partisan attacks on independent oversight benefit fraudsters?

[00:00:52]>> Yes, I would say they absolutely benefit fraudsters. They politicize the entire endeavor of going after waste, fraud, and abuse, which is literally the mission statement and reason for existence of watchdogs like Inspectors General.

[00:01:04]>> So, how can Congress better support and defend independent and non-partisan oversight of government programs in your mind in your estimation?

[00:01:11]>> Sure, so I I touched on this a little bit in my opening statement and in more detail in my written statement, but there are a number of pre-existing entities such as Inspector General, such as the Government Accountability Office, who we don't need to reinvent the wheel there. We just need to strengthen, empower, and protect those entities. We need to give them the resources they need to conduct their important work of oversight. And most importantly, we need to provide more political insulation and independence so that they can do that work without fear or favor and without being overly meddled with by people with partisan and political agendas, because that's anathema to any effective oversight.

[00:01:46]>> All right. Mr. Letter Godot, POGO has raised concerns about both President Biden and President Trump's use of presidential uh This uh administration has claimed uh to care about fraud, and yet President Trump has pardoned a staggering uh number of convicted fraudsters.

[00:02:07]To date, he has pardoned over two dozen criminals uh who committed a combined nearly five or three billion dollars in financial crimes and fraud.

[00:02:18]Uh these pardons also rob victims of approximately 1.3 billion dollars in restitution payments.

[00:02:25]They were uh given to people like Lawrence Duran who committed 205 million dollars in Medicare fraud, and Trevor Milton who committed 680 million dollars in securities fraud. Mr. Milton and his wife, not surprisingly, donated two and a half million dollars to the presidential campaign.

[00:02:44]So, my question for you, sir, is how would you describe pardoning criminal fraudster campaign donors as uh an effort to combat fraud?

[00:02:54]>> I would describe it as a completely nonsensical approach to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. And again, it undermines any claims one might have to caring about waste, fraud, and abuse to pardon convicted fraudsters. And in the case of one uh Florida woman, a multiply convicted fraudster who was convicted once, uh got a commutation in Trump's first term, and then was convicted again and got a full pardon in the second term. So, that does not seem to me like the action of a of an entity that actually cares about fraud. Perhaps it's just fraud when it's perpetrated by the right people or the wrong people.

[00:03:25]>> So, what what do you think Congress should do to rein in the misuse of uh presidential pardon power?

[00:03:31]>> This is a tricky one. The pardon power is, of course, uh constitutionally prescribed. It's pretty stark. Um yeah, I have a personal hobbyhorse view that uh a constitutional amendment to remove the pardon power should probably be considered because it's a vestigial legacy of a sort of monarchical view of the head of state, which is kind of the whole thing we're supposed to be against here in the United States. Uh we don't like kings and so the pardon power is very much a kingly a divine right of kings sort of concept. But barring that, uh I think there are some sort of common sense uh constitutionally viable approaches to more transparencies, consultation, reporting and disclosure and a bit of a kind of I think a stronger process from within the DOJ's uh pardon office.

[00:04:14]>> Thank you. You know, I've I've been proud to uh enact bipartisan legislation to improve government uh data uh analytics, enhance oversight capabilities and prevent payments to dead people.

[00:04:26]Uh however, challenges remain, especially as fraudsters have become more sophisticated and government systems and tools have quite frankly just not kept pace. In fiscal year '25, government agencies estimated that $186 billion of improper payments were made. So, my question for you uh Mr. Hiller Goodat is what what practical solutions should Congress prioritize to prevent improper payments and stop fraudulent behavior while still protecting critical programs that Americans rely on every day?

[00:04:57]>> Thank you. Uh One-in-verification is really important.

[00:05:00]I believe Chairman Paul referred to this in his opening statement. Uh we we do not do enough of that. Uh but also end-to-end transparency, reporting and disclosure at every step along the spending and funding chain is critically important. We also don't do much of that. So, you know, I don't need to tell you all this there in Congress, but the appropriations process is you all doing your thing with the money. It goes to federal agency, then federal agencies award it out to prime recipient, but then those prime recipients tend to parcel it out and award it out to a whole range of different sub-awardees and sub-recipients. That's where we really lose any meaningful insight into where the money's going, who's ending up with it, what is the impact that it's having. So, if there was one sort of key sort of close to a silver bullet I would recommend is getting our hands around sub-award reporting and transparency all the all the up and down the chain from end to end.

[00:05:47]Thank you.