Trump Calls Vance the ‘Fraud Czar.’ Here’s What We Know About the Role

President Donald Trump said on Friday that Vice President J.D. Vance “is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States” and will be referred to as the country’s “fraud czar.”

In his Truth Social post, Trump claimed that fraud “is massive and pervasive” in the U.S. and said of Vance that “the job he will be doing, in conjunction with many great people within the Trump Administration, will be a major factor in how great the future of our Country will be.”

“We will call him the ‘FRAUD CZAR,’” Trump continued, “and his focus will be ‘EVERYWHERE,’ but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a ‘free for all’ in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money. The numbers are so large that, if successful, we would literally be able to balance our American Budget.” The President did not offer evidence for these assertions.

The Vice President’s office referred TIME to an Executive Order Trump signed on March 16 to establish an anti-fraud task force to “coordinate and accelerate a comprehensive national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs, including programs administered jointly with State, local, tribal, and territorial partners.” The Executive Order stated that the Vice President would serve as the task force’s chairman. 

Vance held the first-ever meeting of the task force last week. The meeting wasn’t open to the public, but Vance said beforehand that fraud had to be addressed with “a whole-government approach.”

“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” Vance said, according to The Associated Press. “It is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on.”

Trump has zeroed in on fraud as a central focus of his second term agenda. In recent months, the President and his Administration have repeatedly targeted Minnesota in particular over allegations of fraud, freezing federal childcare funding and “temporarily” suspending more than $250 million in Medicaid funding for the state. Trump also defended his aggressive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis by pointing to the allegations. 

California has also been a focus of the Administration’s efforts to crack down on fraud. On Friday, Trump said in his Truth Social post that “raids have already started in L.A.” The day before, federal officials announced they had arrested eight individuals who they accused of taking part in health care fraud schemes in and near L.A. The White House’s official rapid response account on X touted news that same day that Vance’s anti-fraud task force had suspended more than 200 hospice and health care providers in California.

Both Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have said that their states have worked for years to combat fraud, and pointed to pardons Trump has previously issued to a number of people convicted on fraud charges.

At the start of the year, Vance unveiled the creation of a new role in the Justice Department to investigate fraud, adding that the person in that position would report directly to himself and the President. A few weeks later, Trump named Colin McDonald as his pick to take on the new role, Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement. McDonald was sworn in to the role by Vance on Wednesday.