In proclaiming a ‘golden age of America’ in his State of the Union address, President Trump correctly focused on his initiatives to fix the problems perpetrated by the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations that undermine the physical and economic security of the United States. One of those initiatives is Trump’s war on fraud, which, according to the president, is intended to root out and remedy the ‘corruption that shreds the fabric’ of our nation.
Under the leadership of Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Colin McDonald, Trump’s nominee for the newly created federal post of assistant attorney general for the National Fraud Enforcement Division, Trump’s war will get waged aggressively. As the president put it, ‘We are not playing games.’
But to win the war against fraud, the Trump administration must force the uniparty institutionalists at the Justice Department to change course and protect a key ally in the war on fraud: whistleblowers. Despite being treated as pariahs for decades by the Justice Department’s elitist careerists, whistleblowers are instrumental in enabling the recovery of taxpayer dollars from entities that defraud the government. Whistleblowers play a critical role under the False Claims Act, which has been used to recover $85 billion in taxpayer dollars since 1986. Just last year, the government recovered more than $6.8 billion under the False Claims Act – the highest single-year recovery in its history.
Unfortunately, parts of the Justice Department have not gotten Trump’s memo. This is particularly true of the career attorneys in the DOJ’s Civil Division, which is given investigatory and litigation responsibilities under the False Claims Act.
The Civil Division maintains policies that undermine Trump’s war on fraud. How? Those policies undermine whistleblowers—the foot soldiers in the trenches—who uncover and litigate fraud claims on behalf of the Justice Department. The Civil Division maintains it has the unfettered discretion to dismiss any anti-fraud lawsuit brought by a whistleblower under the False Claims Act merely by deciding the lawsuit will not vindicate the government’s interest—whatever that means. The Civil Division maintains it can make this decision without evidentiary support and without regard to the underlying facts. That’s hard to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s 2023 8-1 decision in U.S. ex rel. Polansky v. Exec. Health Res., Inc., which held that the Justice Department does not enjoy such unfettered dismissal discretion.
More problematically, the Civil Division’s continuation of the Bush, Obama and Biden anti-whistleblower policy undermines the Trump administration’s efforts to combat fraud. Indeed, despite years of hard work and lot of money invested by whistleblowers, the Civil Division maintains it can pull out the rug from under whistleblowers at any time, for any reason, or no reason. This arbitrary Civil Division policy makes it much less likely whistleblowers will enlist in Trump’s war on fraud.
Targets of fraud enforcement by the Trump administration properly include Somalian day care centers, university DEI programs, and other examples of corruption actively promoted by Democrats. A whistleblower exposing such fraudulent and illegal activities does so at considerable personal risk. But what whistleblower would knowingly take this risk if her action under the False Claims Act were subject to Civil Division policy it could dismiss any lawsuit, at any time, for any reason, or no reason?
Americans have learned the hard way that we have magnitudes more fraud than federal prosecutors and agents to root it out, so the Justice Department’s support of whistleblowers is more critical than ever. A successful war against fraud requires alignment across the government. Vance acknowledged as much, noting in a recent Fox News interview that his efforts will include a ‘full, whole government approach’ to investigating fraud concerns. But this approach necessitates that the Civil Division change its policies to support, rather than undermine, a critical ally in Trump’s war on fraud: whistleblowers.