The federal government’s push to crack down on public assistance fraud is seeing some wins, but a new report suggests the biggest problems are festering in states that aren’t aggressively looking for them. Author and investigative reporter Peter Schweizer, speaking on The DrillDown podcast, said the government recovered about $2 billion in fraud in 2025—a figure he calls “not the fire-breathing number I think many were hoping for,” even though it’s 40 percent higher than during the last year of the Biden administration.
Schweizer, who leads the Government Accountability Institute, argues that experts know the true scale of fraud is far larger. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of all public assistance transactions are fraudulent, according to fraud investigators he and his team have interviewed. “That’s kind of accepted in the system,” he said.
Where the Fraud Fight Is Working
The Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts, championed by DOGE and Vice President J.D. Vance’s task force, have yielded results in some states. Federal inspectors in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Alabama have outperformed larger states in detecting and prosecuting welfare fraud. In 2024, the Inspector General recovered $1.4 billion in fraud in Michigan alone.
On the latest episode of The DrillDown, co-host Eric Eggers highlighted a Texas operation that stopped a $6.5 billion fraud ring involving overbilling, and noted that California’s Medicaid fraud could reach $10 billion. “I guess the Trump administration would say, ‘We’re bringing more charges than ever,’” Eggers said.
California and Minnesota Under Scrutiny
But not all states are pulling their weight. Federal efforts removed 1,000 fake hospice claimants from Medicare, and in Minnesota, the now-jailed “kingpin” of fraudulent daycare and food programs has claimed that political leaders, including Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), knew about the fraud and looked the other way to protect the Somali voting bloc in Minneapolis.
California, despite having 270 people dedicated to Medicaid fraud investigations, produced just 32 indictments in 2024. Eggers contrasted that with Pennsylvania, a Democratic-run state with one-fourth the staff, which conducted 700 investigations and secured 113 indictments—almost four times California’s total.
“It just shows you that the fraud is there if you want to look for it. But not every state wants to look,” Eggers said.
Indiana, with just 59 staff, had 27 indictments in 2024, while Ohio’s 105 investigators delivered 69 indictments, placing it third behind Texas and Arizona.
A Threat to Withhold Funds
The Trump administration has signaled it may punish non-cooperative states. “If you don’t investigate these things, we’re going to withhold money because of our fear that widespread fraud is taking place,” Schweizer said, describing the strategy. “That’s about to cost California serious money.”
Schweizer also pointed to connections between Minnesota politicians and fraudsters. Ilhan Omar’s sister incorporated a business at the same Minneapolis address where Amy Bach, the daycare fraud “kingpin,” ran her operations. Schweizer noted that Omar is also featured in commercials for a restaurant led by one of the top fraud offenders, details first reported by Luke Rosiak of The Daily Wire.
“So, Ilhan Omar is literally one degree removed from the person who was at the center of it,” Schweizer said.
While fraud is an inevitable part of any system, Schweizer argues that states with millions of people on public assistance indicting only a handful of individuals sends a dangerous message. “Some of these states are indicting a handful of people when you’ve got millions of people on public assistance shows that they’re not taking this seriously,” he said.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/podcast/2026/08/12/peter-schweizer-the-war-on-fraud-continues-without-democrats-help/