Vice President JD Vance mocked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s attempt to take credit for the FBI’s fraud investigation in Minneapolis while addressing whether the administration would consider denaturalizing individuals accused of fraud.
During an exclusive sit-down interview with “The Will Cain Show” Wednesday, the vice president criticized Walz for allegedly taking credit for recent fraud raids in Minneapolis.
“This is like the arsonist trying to claim credit for the work of the fire department because Tim Walz let this fraud happen under his watch,” Vance said. “Whether he was complicit in it directly himself or just turned a blind eye towards it.”
His comments come after the FBI raided dozens of Minnesota businesses suspected of fraud, including multiple childcare centers and the Quality Learning Center (infamously misspelled “Quality Learing Center”), a crackdown Vance said Walz did not assist with.
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In an X post Tuesday, Walz appeared to take a bow for the raids.
“Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it. That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars,” Walz posted.
FBI Director Kash Patel was among several in addition to Vance who sharply rebuked the governor’s remarks.
“Come again?” Patel said on X in response to Walz. “This FBI and DOJ with our DHS partners drafted and executed every search warrant today. But go ahead and take credit for our work while we smoke out the fraud plaguing Minnesota under your governorship.”
Vance denied Walz’s claims that he aided in the fraud crackdown in Minnesota, arguing that credit is truly due elsewhere.
“We really did not get much help at all from the governor’s office,” he told host Will Cain. “Where we did actually get some help was from some state local law enforcement officers who we assigned to the federal task force because the state government wasn’t doing anything.”
Vance, who serves as the administration’s “fraud czar,” expressed significant frustration with the defrauding of vulnerable Americans.
A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025.
“This fraud ring that we’ve allowed to fester in this country, it defrauds the taxpayers. It also literally takes resources from the mouths of poor children,” Vance said.
The vice president pledged that investigators will take a “hard look” at top Minnesota elected officials suspected of knowing about what he described as a “fraud scheme.”
“There were multiple Minnesota authorities who were turning a blind eye to this fraud,” Vance claimed. “What we don’t yet know is whether they knew it was going on as it was doing on, but that’s one of the things that we’re looking at with these investigations.”
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Vance also criticized the Biden administration, alleging it accepted people into the country on fraudulent asylum and refugee claims and pledging to “unwind” that system.
“You have people … who came into this country, many of them illegally, and six months later they’re driving Mercedes despite the fact that they don’t have a job,” Vance said. “That doesn’t happen without some defrauding of the American taxpayer.
“The fact that they turned a blind eye towards it for so long is a scandal. We’re also going to find out whether it was criminal.”
Vance went on to address whether the Trump administration would consider denaturalizing or deporting immigrants convicted of fraud.
“Absolutely,” he told Fox News. “And that’s one of the angles that we’re looking at, is the people who committed immigration fraud against our system, and how do we denaturalize those people and send them back to where they came from.”
Vance also joked about the “Quality Learing Center,” the site that initially sparked the administration’s fraud crackdown, while suggesting the crackdown is just getting started.
“I think Minneapolis is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “I think there’s sort of a good news, bad news situation in that, Will, which the good news is that we’re stopping the fraud that’s happening against the American taxpayer. The bad news is my own children will never be able to attend school at the ‘Quality Learing Center.'”
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
