Free Republic

If you were a donor to Eric Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign, how would you react to learning that your contributions were used to pay his own wife to watch their children? As Swalwell now runs for governor of California, a troubling pattern of campaign spending is drawing scrutiny, one that now includes direct payments to his spouse for “childcare.” These payments do not stand alone. They come after years of similar child care expenditures through his congressional campaign, which are already the subject of my formal complaint before the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A New Round of Payments—This Time to His...

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Administration Chair Bryan Steil vowed Monday to continue their probe into how ActBlue vets foreign donations after a report indicated it may have lied to Congress. A New York Times report last week found that a law firm for ActBlue warned the company last year that it may have misled Congress in a 2023 letter that claimed it used "multilayered” screenings of contributions to help “root out” donations from overseas, but the law firm found that some steps were not always followed. The lawmakers said the report...

A federal court rejected Minnesota’s attempt to restart Medicaid funding that the Trump administration had halted over concerns people are stealing the money, with the judge saying even the state has acknowledged it has a “serious fraud problem.” Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, said Minnesota may still prevail later in the case, but for now the feds are on relatively solid legal footing in deferring more than $250 million in Medicaid money to prod the state to combat fraud. “Though Minnesota credibly complains that the federal government’s deferral is historically unprecedented in its size and timing, I conclude on...

Government auditors in Democrat-dominated Washington State say that more than $1.3 billion in spending through the state’s childcare subsidy system cannot be verified. The audit, covering 2021 through 2024, revealed that the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) failed to maintain the necessary records to track federal childcare funds at the provider level, leaving a slew of expenditures and other payments unaccounted for. Concerningly, the financial review found in 2024 that $416 million was unauditable, with $356 million in 2023, $268.5 million in 2022, and $293 million in 2021. The State Auditor’s Office (SAO) described the situation as “serious...

California's delayed, over-budget high-speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco is running fast in only one direction: Rising costs to even get rolling, which are now estimated to be $126 billion. "Today, we estimate with the right optimization just over $125 billion," California High Speed Rail Authority board member Anthony Williams told CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday. "I think $126 billion is the current estimate for that." Snip "We’re now in 2026: There are no trains; there’s no track laid; it was a complete bait and switch," Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., told "60 Minutes," saying the project "needs to...

Gavin Newsom’s transport secretary has admitted criticism of California’s high-speed rail is justified — as estimates of the project show it will be a struggle to be completed. Officials now say it will cost an eye-watering $126 billion to finish the line from Los Angeles to San Francisco — which is more money than Amtrak has ever received from the federal government since it was established in 1971, a damning 60 Minutes report revealed. That’s and a huge uptick when compared to the $33 billion voters were told the rail would cost when it was announced way back in 2008....

Could Marco Rubio be the one to take down the woke and seemingly untouchable Rep. Ilhan Omar? He seems to think that $40 million fortune of hers came from something different than wine sales from her winery. [X post at link] Which is shockingly direct. Usually, they don't state things so directly. But if it's true that Omar ran a pay-to-play refugee operation, it would surely be illegal. And who would be in a position to know this better than Rubio who runs the Department of State and all its adjacents? With a confident tweet like that, it seems likely...

TV News Now 🚨 NEW: Dr Oz reveals huge scale of California fraud crackdown: “I got news for you today, Bret, we have shut down just in the last ten weeks 221 hospices.” Bret: “Wait, over 220 in the state of California?!” Oz: “Yes, in Los Angeles alone.” How about Texas Hospice fraud, it's there too another problem state..Due to the prevalence of these cases, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has placed new hospice providers in Texas under a Period of Enhanced Oversight (PPEO). This involves stricter scrutiny of Show more

President Donald Trump said Friday that VP J.D. Vance “is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’... In his Truth Social post, Trump claimed that fraud “is massive and pervasive” in the U.S. and said of Vance that “the job he will be doing, in conjunction with many great people within the Trump Administration....” “We will call him the ‘FRAUD CZAR,’” Trump continued, “ his focus will be ‘EVERYWHERE,’ ... in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money. The numbers are so large that, if successful, we would literally be able to balance our American Budget.” The President did not offer evidence for...

There’s so much fraud happening in California that Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor believes he could “never have enough” prosecutors to tackle it all. First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli spoke to The Post Friday about fraud in California — and how, despite his “unlimited hiring authority,” the Department of Justice is starving for new prosecutors aimed at the “almost unimaginable” amount of fraud in the state. “We’re in a very target rich environment, and there is no shortage of leads for fraud investigations,” he said. “I would say we are doing a lot...

What do you get when you cross the Corleone crime family with the Sopranos pulling off a heist even bigger than the Lucchese crime family's multimillion-dollar Lufthansa caper in 1978? I dunno, but it's got nothin' on California. If you haven't already read Rick Moran's excellent "Gavin Newsom, 'The Celebrated Jumping Fraud King of Calaveras County'," open that in a new tab, take a gander, then come back here. Because when I first read Rick's piece, I thought, "That's some massive theft going on, but how big is it, really?"Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ know I can't look at the big...

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested that the Department of Justice is investigating ActBlue after a New York Times report said that ActBlue might have lied to Congress about vetting foreign donations. Blanche told TV show host Jesse Waters: "That's a priority of this administration and this DOJ. It's something that a lot of people have been worried about it for a very long time. You can rest assured that it includes the Department of Justice and it includes me."🚨 BREAKING: Todd Blanche indicates the DOJ is ACTIVELY INVESTIGATING ActBlue getting foreign donations and lying about it"That's a priority of...

One month into Operation Epic Fury against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a long-overdue conversation has finally broken into the open: What, exactly, is the enduring rationale for NATO? For decades, this question has been treated in Washington foreign policy circles as heretical. But it isn't. And to their credit, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are now saying so plainly. As Trump recently put it, "They haven't been friends when we needed them. We've never asked them for much. ... It's a one-way street." Rubio has been similarly blunt: "If NATO is just about us defending...

Top White House aide Stephen Miller joined Vice President JD Vance to launch the White House anti-fraud task force Friday, pledging to "demolish" the kind of corruption that unfairly burdens taxpayers and gives a free ride to bad actors. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump launched the task force via executive order, saying the 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." Vance serves as its chairman and kicked off the White House event Friday, while...

Mark Twain is rightly considered one of America's best and most beloved writers. His first commercial success was a short story about the California Gold Rush titled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Published in 1865, it highlighted people's extraordinary gullibility when a tale is told well enough, and the storyteller can charm his listeners into believing anything. That's a description of the current governor of California and possible next Democratic Party presidential candidate. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was a natural when he ran for governor in 2018. It was like he walked off a movie set and into...

The Department of Education announced Thursday that it has saved American taxpayers more than $1 billion by aggressively eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse within federal student aid programs. The department’s new report takes aim at previous policies, claiming that while citizens must present identification to board a flight or rent a car, the Biden administration had required identity verification for less than 1% of students applying for federal financial aid. "That ill-informed decision created a prime opportunity for fraudsters to exploit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form and steal taxpayer funds," the department stated in a press...

The FBI arrested a married couple Thursday accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.45 million while running a hospice with a survival rate reported to be more than 97% after five years. They were the first in a series of arrests planned Thursday, federal officials told CBS News. A high survival rate at a hospice provider is one of a series of red flags identified by state auditors for fraud because most people enter hospice care in the final stages of a terminal illness. In past cases of fraud, operators were found to be using false or stolen identities to...

Our task force isn’t wasting any time cracking down on fraud. This morning in the LA area, federal law enforcement is taking down fraudsters who stole $50M+ from Americans by defrauding our healthcare and hospice systems. Thanks to @DrOzCMS and @USAttyEssayli for their work.

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday the Justice Department will no longer "turn a blind eye" to fraud in the United States, regardless of how big or small the fraud is. Vance made the comment just before he swore Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement Colin McDonald into office, who has been confirmed to help lead Vance's national fraud task force. The vice president claimed that the DOJ previously "turned a blind eye" toward fraud that was under an undisclosed dollar amount, but that McDonald has promised to ensure that "no fraud is small enough or big enough to...

There’s a lot of money in crises and if you’re wondering where that money went, ask the folks profiting from the crisis. The open borders invasion was bad news for a lot of people, but good news for some. Now there’s bad news to go with the good news. Federal prosecutors are investigating whether a New York City Council member and her sister, an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul, accepted bribes or kickbacks in connection with the appropriation of city funds to a migrant shelter provider in a warrant that seeks evidence of possible criminal violations involving Councilmember Farah Louis,...