Senate moves forward with Trump pick for DOJ ‘fraud enforcement’ chief

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to advance President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s new “fraud enforcement” division, rising above concerns from some lawmakers that it would be used to punish political opponents.

The upper chamber’s judicial affairs committee voted along party lines to advance Colin McDonald to a final confirmation vote just days after the White House revealed the details of its own antifraud task force that it said will include input from the Justice Department.

Speaking ahead of the panel’s vote Thursday morning, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin accused McDonald, an assistant to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, of being a rank partisan, pointing to his work with the Trump administration’s “weaponization working group,” a Justice Department unit aimed at probing supposed abuses of agency power against Trump and people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Durbin, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, complained that the fraud enforcement nominee was unwilling to stand up to Trump. “He is more committed to scoring political points than he is to uncovering waste fraud and abuse,” the senator said.

Trump earlier this year announced that the Justice Department would create a new division to investigate what the president and his allies have long said is rampant fraud against federal benefits programs and other government services. The administration’s focus on the issue has been supercharged in recent months amid accusations of widespread child care fraud in Minnesota.

But critics of the Justice Department’s new fraud section have worried about its independence from the president. They’ve pointed to comments from Vice President JD Vance that the division would be “run out of the White House.”

“Can anyone with a straight face argue this new division operating under the president’s thumb will be a nonpartisan law enforcement agency?” Durbin asked. “Clearly, the real purpose of the division is to weaponize fraud enforcement against the president’s opponents.”

The top Democrat added that he’d demanded more information on the fraud division from Attorney General Pam Bondi but had yet to hear back. He urged committee Republicans to hold off on voting to advance McDonald’s nomination until he received the details he requested.

But Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the nominee was the “right person for the job.”

“Mr. McDonald is a career public servant and an expert in fraud protection,” said Grassley. “He is highly regarded because he’s prosecuted hard cases and has prosecuted them well.”

During his nomination hearing last month, McDonald dodged questions from lawmakers about his relationship with the Justice Department’s weaponization working group. He told Durbin that he was involved with the unit but that it was one of his “many responsibilities” as a deputy to Blanche.

The nominee, however, said he supported the group’s mission. “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,” McDonald said at the time.

And the Justice Department’s prospective fraud enforcement chief pushed back on claims from some Democrats that the Trump administration had deprioritized other antifraud efforts at the agency.

After Delaware Senator Chris Coons pointed out that the Justice Department had eliminated its division charged with probing cryptocurrency scams and that investigations into money laundering and tax fraud schemes had plummeted by more than half, McDonald replied that the agency had in fact seen a “record-setting year in the area of fraud.”

If confirmed, McDonald may be the Justice Department official selected to represent the agency on the Trump administration’s separate antifraud task force, formally unveiled in an executive order signed this week.

In the White House decree, Trump blamed “self-dealing political actors” at the state level for failing to police public benefits programs which are then exploited by “illegal aliens, criminals, foreign gangs, bureaucrats” and other “ineligible providers.”

The executive order also made bold claims about election fraud, asserting that migrants who are ineligible to vote do so anyway and that public officials permit “widespread ballot harvesting schemes” that compromise election integrity.

“My administration will use all available resources and authorities to fight fraud, close loopholes, enforce eligibility rules and protect benefits for eligible Americans, while ensuring states administering federal benefits programs do the same,” Trump wrote.

The new White House task force, which is apparently separate from the Justice Department’s fraud enforcement division, will be led by Vance and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson. The group will also include “appropriate representatives” from other federal agencies, including the Justice Department.

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