What the Fraud Machine Counts, and What It Claims

The administration's own improper-payments tracker — the one run through its DOGE effort — recorded a 19 percent decline for 2025, the lowest level since 2018 ^[1]. That same week, at a rollout in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, the president put the fraud recoverable from the system at "hundreds of billions of dollars" ^[1][2]. In December the figure was spoken before anything existed to back it. The president branded Minnesota "a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity" and attached a number — a billion dollars — weeks before any fraud division had been created ^[3]. The real thing surfaced that same month underneath the claim: a $250 million network of daycare centers in the state, 78 indictments and 57 convictions, grown out of the reporting of a conservative video-maker named Nick Shirley ^[4]. January brought the institution. The man nominated to run the new National Fraud Enforcement division, Colin McDonald, would not report through the Justice Department but directly to the president and the vice president ^[5]. That month the president also called for Representative Ilhan Omar's imprisonment or deportation, and the number had grown, with Omar now attached to "more than $18 billion" ^[6]. The demand was explicit.

She could help to MAKE SOMALIA GREAT AGAIN! — Donald Trump

February gave the campaign its money motive. The "war on fraud" announced at the State of the Union carried a specific promise — that recovering the stolen money could balance the entire federal budget — and its first act was withholding $259.5 million in Medicaid reimbursements from Minnesota ^[7]. Then the arc turned, and it turned on a Democrat. In March, Senator John Fetterman condemned Governor Newsom's treatment of Shirley and, in the same breath, conceded the finding itself ^[8].

Governor Newsom put out a disgusting video implying that he’s a pedophile or he’s that … why? That’s kind of a smear. — John Fetterman

A Democrat had now conceded the fraud itself. The 57 convictions were not a footnote to the enforcement effort; they were the engine that let the number keep growing, and from March on every claim the campaign made about fraud could stand on the part that was true. October then arrived fast. On October 7 the government said it had analyzed nearly 100 million voter records ^[9], and five days later federal agents executed a search warrant at Omar's home, seizing her phone and passport — nine months after the president's demand ^[10]. Asked about the raid, the president left the decision elsewhere.

She should be in jail, or even a worse punishment, sent back to Somalia, considered one of the absolutely worst countries in the World. — Donald Trump

The bounty came last, on October 20, launched from the stage of the midterm blitz. It was announced as paying tips "leading to federal convictions" ^[2]. The first check, for $10,000, went to Shirley — the video-maker whose reporting had supplied the effort's 57 convictions ^[4] — and it paid, by the program's own accounting, for a tip that "triggered federal investigations" rather than led to any conviction ^[2]. The president widened the terms on the spot: "a 1 percent commission," no cap, and himself the judge of every payout.

I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions. — Donald Trump

The vice president held the door open for the next check.

The president has said it must stop. It is stopping. And if you want to help us stop it, you get to share in the rewards. — JD Vance

Meanwhile, by that same week's reporting, the department had purged its anti-corruption unit, and the South Carolina bribery probe had stalled out ^[11]. The administration's own tracker recorded improper payments down 19 percent in 2025, the lowest since 2018 ^[1]. The estimate in the hundreds of billions survives because the campaign can point to things that are real: 57 convictions, a Democratic senator conceding the fraud exists, a warrant signed and served.