JD Vance Calls for Stronger Action Against Fraud and Wasteful Government Spending | APT

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Please take a seat.

[00:00:11]Okay, so what we're going to do is uh make some introductory remarks from me, from Andrew Ferguson, and then from Steven Miller. And then we'll kick out the press and have the real conversation. But first let me say uh thanks to all of you for being here. Uh very gratified and proud of the fact that we have uh 15 different state AG offices represented here today who are focused on helping us in combating fraud all over our government and I'm going to be very brief here about what what we're trying to do here. So uh one of the things we've realized in combating fraud is that the resources of the federal government, while vast, can be supplemented and aided by a lot of the people who know best what's happening in their states, which is the attorneys general represented here today. And they have a lot of legal resources, they have a lot of prosecutorial resources, and of course they have the desire to prevent fraud as much as we do. And so I appreciate these leaders for being here because we're going to work together, state and federal government, to try to combat fraud. Uh I'm particularly gratified here that this is not a partisan effort.

[00:01:09]I believe we have a couple of representatives uh from the attorney generals in um Connecticut and Oregon.

[00:01:15]And as I've said repeatedly, this is not need to be this should not be a partisan effort. Everybody should care about fraud. Everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers' money. And importantly, everybody should care about actually protecting the programs that only work and are only properly funded if it's not if the money funding those programs isn't being stolen by fraudsters. So uh let me just recap for uh the benefit of our our friends in the media, uh in just 2 months we exposed billions of dollars in benefits that have been stolen from the American people. We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection. We deferred more than $1.3 billion dollars fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements uh that were coming from various states, particularly California. We put a 6-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers because so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually providing hospice services, but were just uh focused on fraud. So, we're going to cut that out for a little bit and try to get to a place where we can actually certify that the people providing hospice services are actually providing those very necessary and important services.

[00:02:23]We've recovered taxpayer funds from the 135 billion dollars stolen after the floodgates were open in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found 6.3 billion dollars in suspected fraudulent government contracts, which were mostly awarded during the last administration, and that has stopped. And finally, we blocked 60 million dollars in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead we're going to fraudsters. And I I think the theme here of the anti-fraud task force up to this point has really be been that we're protecting two classes of victims here. We're protecting the American taxpayers who shouldn't have their money stolen by fraudsters, and of course we're protecting the people who need these services. Fraud is not a victimless crime. This is not somebody gets to make some money for violating the law, and otherwise it's not a big deal. Uh this is people who rely on critical services, students who rely on student loan services, sick people who reply who rely on hospice care, a number of small businesses who rely on the availability of these loans so that they can grow their business and hire people. All of these people, all of our fellow Americans, have been taken advantage by fraudsters, and the task force is here to stop it. So, without further ado, let me kick it over to Andrew Ferguson, who's going to talk a little bit about how we're going to work with these state attorneys general, and it's attorneys general, right? Not attorney generals.

[00:03:43]That's That's That's very counterintuitive. We got to change this. Maybe the the group here together we got enough of a critical mass of attorneys generals to change it, but Andrew attorneys general I'm never going to be able to get that right and the media of course is going to make fun of me for