Bonta says Vance snubbed Dem AGs as divide over fraud fighting effort deepens
California Attorney General Rob Bonta agrees with Vice President J.D. Vance’s assertion that fraudsters bilking government social programs are a pressing problem. But he does not trust a federal task force on the matter that continues to appear, to his and other critics’ eyes, as a politically-motivated effort to undermine Democrat-governed states.
That was the message Bonta, joined by the attorneys general of New York, Hawaii, New Jersey and Wisconsin, conveyed on Tuesday when he accused Vance of snubbing their offices when planning a meeting of a federal anti-fraud task force the vice president has led since March.
Vance, at the publicly-aired portion of Tuesday’s meeting, called for bipartisanship and said there were officials representing Democrat-led attorneys general in the room. The vice president had decided to invite Democrat AGs late in the game to a meeting originally aimed just at Republicans, according to prior reporting by CNBC and to a federal official familiar with the planning who spoke to The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.
The Democrats were invited Friday to the Tuesday meeting.
“I’m particularly gratified that this is not a partisan effort,” Vance said. “Everybody should care about fraud.”
But to Bonta, Vance’s proclamation of bipartisanship rang hollow following a “clearly disingenuous last-minute invitation,” he said.
A high level member of Bonta’s staff, the director of the Division of MediCal Fraud and Elder Abuse, flew across the country for the meeting but was turned away at the door, he said. Other AGs that declined sent staff that were turned away from the meeting, including a deputy attorney general from New York, that state’s Attorney General Letitia James said.
Task force officials told the Democrat attorneys general their staff were turned away because they were not high enough figures in their departments to attend a space-restricted meeting. Officials from Republican states whose titles fell short were also turned away, according to a federal official familiar with the meeting organization.
The dust up over the task force meeting is the latest symptom of a deepening distrust between top law enforcement officials in Democrat-led states and federal officials on the anti-fraud task force.
Fraud is an issue of growing concern for voters of both parties. But Democrats have accused Trump and Vance of focusing only on states elected officials from their party oversee. The task force itself is unusual — with the partisan vice president leading a group that encompasses different areas of the federal government but has a heavy emphasis on pursuing criminal charges against fraudsters.
Democrats have questioned whether Vance’s role would bring political machinations into decisions prosecutors and investigators make about what cases to pursue. But the Trump administration has built a lot of momentum for the effort after alleged fraud among service providers to Minnesota’s immigrant community drew widespread public interest and led Gov. Tim Walz to end his reelection campaign.
Vance appeared at Tuesday’s meeting alongside White House advisor Stephen Miller. Long considered a key architect of Trump’s harsh — and increasingly unpopular — crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Miller said that “what happened to our country is we became a society, as you see with this Somali refugee problem in Minnesota, where you have a large number of people that are not following the honor system ... are not abiding by our laws.”
Federal officials charged 15 people in Minnesota with Medicaid fraud earlier this month. But the Trump administration also faced widespread backlash when officials used fraud allegations as justification for an immigration enforcement surge into Minneapolis that led to the deaths of two protesters, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
In California, both state and national Republican figures have sought to use well-documented fraud in California’s hospice industry as a cudgel against the state’s Democrat leaders.
“We won’t be used as props in Vance’s political performance,” Bonta said at Tuesday’s news conference.
He and the AGs of 22 other states, as well as the District of Columbia’s attorney general, declined to attend the event in a letter sent to Vance on Tuesday.
Despite the barbs flying Tuesday, the Democrat AGs implied in their letter that their agencies and federal law enforcement continue to collaborate on fraud investigations.
“With appropriate notice and a genuine opportunity for engagement, we would welcome the chance to participate in a future meeting and contribute to a productive dialogue,” the Democrat attorneys general wrote.
Likewise, Vance and other federal officials called for collaboration.
“Don’t run with your ball and go home,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, a top official in the newly created National Fraud Enforcement Division of the justice department. “Come to the table and solve this with us.”
McDonald was recently in San Francisco to announce the opening of a law enforcement task force focused on healthcare fraud in Northern California, Arizona and Nevada, a bipartisan set of states.
