Vice President JD Vance compared Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz to an “arsonist trying to claim credit for the work of the fire department” after Walz praised his administration’s role in a series of anti-fraud raids on daycares around Minneapolis earlier this week.
Vance told Fox News host Will Cain on Wednesday that the Trump administration “really did not get much help at all from the Governor’s office” despite Walz’s claims that state agencies helped initiate the investigation.
Walz said Tuesday that raids at nearly two dozen daycares and learning centers were conducted “by state and federal law enforcement … because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it.”
Vance pushed back sharply.
“This is like the arsonist trying to claim credit for the work of the fire department because Tim Walz let this fraud happen under his watch, whether he was complicit in it directly himself or just turned a blind eye towards it.”
“Where we did actually get some help was from some state and local law enforcement officers who we assigned to the federal task force because the state government wasn’t doing anything,” Vance added. “All credit goes to people on the ground: the state officers, the federal officers who are working to uncover this fraud.”
Vance, who was tapped by President Donald Trump in February to lead the administration’s crackdown on state-level fraud, said that the White House’s anti-fraud task force has moved quickly to investigate suspected abuses, especially in Minnesota.
The probe gained national attention after independent journalist Nick Shirley posted videos in December raising questions about fraud tied to several Somali-run daycare and learning centers in the Twin Cities area.
“These investigations take a long time, so I was asking myself, ‘How quickly can we start getting into some real investigatory work, court-issued warrants, actually going door-to-door and finding out what’s going on?’ People told me it would take at least six months,” Vance said. “We’ve gone from Nick Shirley’s video about the Minneapolis fraud schemes to … judges issuing warrants for this investigation in a matter of three months.”
Vance added that the federal government’s anti-fraud task force includes 280 law enforcement officers looking into the issue.
“We really have the most accelerated, aggressive anti-fraud operation that we’ve ever seen from the federal government,” the vice president said, adding, “This is far from done, but we’re making a lot of good progress.”
Federal agents with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security executed search warrants Tuesday at 22 sites, primarily daycare and learning centers, many of which are Somali-owned. No arrests were made during the raids, though dozens of individuals have been charged with fraud in recent months as federal prosecutors uncovered a massive fraud scheme targeting numerous Minnesota state programs.
“The President’s War on Fraud is working, as the task force and the entire Trump administration continue to work tirelessly to expose Fraudsters who have scammed the American people out of billions of dollars,” a Vance spokesperson told The Daily Wire on background.
Walz, who ended his bid for a third term as governor in January amid scrutiny over the scandal, has defended his administration’s response, arguing that state officials properly flagged fraudulent activity.
In his final State of the State address on Tuesday night, Walz claimed that he has done more than Republican-led states to crack down on fraud.
“We’ve created additional checks and balances. We have brought on more investigators, more auditors, and more law enforcement agencies, as well as an outside firm to take a look at high-risk programs,” he said. “People who have ripped us off are getting caught, and they are going to jail.”
