Trump nominee to lead DOJ ‘fraud enforcement’ division dodges Senate questioning

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to head up a brand-new Justice Department division tasked with prosecuting fraud against the federal government faced sharp questions on Wednesday from Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats skeptical of the administration’s “war on fraud.”

But while Democratic lawmakers needled Colin McDonald, a former prosecutor and Justice Department deputy tapped to become assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, on his participation in a working group probing “weaponization” of the justice system, they spent less time scrutinizing concerns about whether the Trump administration’s proposed fraud czar would operate independently from the White House.

The president last month announced he would set up a Justice Department division aimed at prosecuting what he has called “rampant and pervasive” fraud against federal government programs and benefits. And Trump, during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, alluded to a separate anti-fraud task force, led by Vice President JD Vance, that will also investigate fraud claims.

Both the Justice Department and the White House have offered conflicting views on where the agency’s new fraud enforcement section will fit into the executive branch. Vance told reporters in January that the office would be “run out of the White House” and answer to him and Trump — and the vice president’s anti-fraud task force would reportedly also include the assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement.

A Justice Department organization chart, however, appears to show the fraud czar would report to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

During McDonald’s hearing before the Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning, some Democrats raised concerns about the fraud section’s independence from the White House.

“Who is on first?” wondered Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the panel’s top Democrat, who argued the Justice Department chart “contradicted” statements made by the Trump administration about the new division’s chain of command. He added that the agency had yet to clear up confusion about whether the fraud enforcement office would be staffed with employees from other Justice Department divisions or if it would bring on new hires.

“We should not go ahead with this nominee when such questions are unanswered,” said Durbin.

Other Democrats worried about the possibility that the fraud enforcement division could find itself under political pressure from Trump. Both Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono raised the issue — Hirono asked point-blank whether McDonald would comply if the president asked him to launch a fraud investigation into a specific individual or organization.

“I am a career federal prosecutor,” the nominee replied. “I follow the facts and apply the law. These are the two considerations that come into play for me in every case.”

McDonald also sparred with Democrats over the Trump administration’s past approach to existing fraud enforcement programs at the Justice Department. Lawmakers have pointed out that the administration in the past year has eliminated an agency team tasked with investigating cryptocurrency scams, and the Justice Department has pared down its public integrity office to only a handful of employees.

“The administration is less concerned with specifically fighting fraud than it is with targeting people and states it dislikes or that it has a partisan agenda against,” said Delaware Senator Chris Coons. “At the same time, the administration is creating a new DOJ division and suggesting it may be directed by the White House; they have shut down, eliminated or defunded other anti-fraud units.”

McDonald took issue with the senator’s framing, responding that the Justice Department had had a “record-setting year in the area of fraud.”

But Coons was unconvinced, arguing investigations of money laundering and tax fraud schemes under the False Claims Act had dropped by more than half and that 25,000 federal agents assigned to white-collar crimes had been diverted into immigration enforcement.

Democrats saved the bulk of their questioning, however, for McDonald’s reported involvement with the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” a task force established last year to investigate what Trump and administration officials have characterized as politically motivated prosecutions initiated by the agency under former President Joe Biden.

The nominee largely dodged questions about his relationship to the working group, telling Durbin that he was “involved” with its work but that the task force was just one part of his “many responsibilities” as a deputy in the office of Deputy Attorney General Blanche.

McDonald opted instead to offer words of support for the working group, saying Trump was right to “identify the threat of weaponization in the federal government.”

“The weaponization work in the Department of Justice is critical work to understand some of the underlying facts and circumstances of what went on in the prior administration,” he added.

McDonald repeated those comments on several occasions when pressed by Democratic lawmakers about the weaponization panel, saying each time that Trump was “right” to address the issue and that the Justice Department wanted to “learn from history.”

The nominee proved similarly evasive under questioning from Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, a Republican. Kennedy asked McDonald how the new fraud division would decide which cases to investigate as potential fraud and who at the Justice Department would be involved in prioritizing such probes.

“Let’s suppose that you have a governor who noticed fraud in his Medicaid program, but he ignores it because he would lose all his federal money,” the Louisiana senator posited. “Is that fraud?”

McDonald replied that such conduct could be “a form” of fraud but expressed uncertainty about whether it fit “within the contours of criminal culpability.”

“Is that the sort of thing you’d look at?” Kennedy asked. The nominee responded that his section would probe “the full spectrum of fraud.”

And, like many of the president’s other nominees to high-ranking Justice Department jobs, McDonald refused to say directly whether Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Asked by Vermont Senator Peter Welch whether Biden had won that contest, the nominee responded that the 46th president “was certified as president and served four years in office.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was illegitimate and that widespread voter fraud delivered Democrats the White House. Those accusations, which in part inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, have been roundly rejected by federal courts.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee had yet to schedule a vote on McDonald’s nomination. If approved, he would next be subject to final confirmation before the full Senate.

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