Hearings to examine exposing fraud in America.

you know i don't see my witnesses so

take that back

what

i don't see your witnesses

oh ok we'll we'll start can you ungabble

oh no i just wait they're coming

go on

we'll get there i'll wait for it to come mmm

thank you

the committee will come to order in my office i keep a clock that measures our national debt in real time this morning that clock stood at nearly forty trillion dollars washington taxes the american people washington borrows against our grandchildren's future earnings Then Washington sends billions of dollars out the door, often without knowing who receives it, if any service was performed, or even if the business exists. The federal government loses hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud every year. And when the money disappears, politicians act surprised. No private business would survive this way. A bank confirms an account exists before wiring the money. A credit card company flags suspicious changes in seconds. An insurance company verifies that the patient exists and the treatment occurred before paying the claim. They verify first because it is their money that's online. But when the money belongs to the taxpayer, Washington pays first and asks questions later, if it asks them at all. Our first witness, Nick Shirley, decided to see for himself. In Minneapolis he visited supposed daycare centers that had collected millions of dollars from taxpayers. He found industrial buildings with out windows, no playgrounds, no children, no employees, no one answering the door. These were not complicated accounting irregularities buried deep inside a federal database. The question was obvious, what exactly are taxpayers paying for? Mister Shirley found the same warning signs at autism centers, home health companies, and other providers, collecting large government reimbursements. In California, he found hospice and health care companies stacked into single uh office complexes. some marked by nothing more than a sheet of printer paper taped to a door. Many couldn't answer the basic questions about their own patients. A private insurer would have stopped payment immediately. The federal government kept writing the checks. Prosecutors have now charged fifteen people in Minnesota with schemes involving more than ninety million dollars. One autism services scheme alone, forty six point six million dollars in fraud. The Justice Department calls it the largest Medicaid autism fraud case in its history. Prosecution is necessary, but it co- but it comes after the money is gone. The fraudsters have already been paid. The families who needed care have already been cheated. Taxpayers may only recover pennies on the dollar. Government should verify before it pays. Does the provider exist? Are real people performing real work? Are the patients eligible? Were the services necessary? Are the invoices honest? These are not radical demands. It is what hardworking American taxpayers deserve. When government refuses to verify, it does not merely endanger taxpayer dollars, it destroys public confidence in our elections. In California, James O'Keefe revealed a cash for ballots election fraud scheme, targeting homeless men and women who were offered cash, cigarettes and marijuana in exchange for signatures on petitions, and voter registration forms. So far, one individual exposed to Mister O'Keefe's undercover video footage, pled guilty to federal charges. Mister Shirley followed the money. Mister O'Keefe followed the signatures. Both found the same machine, a system that rewards volume, discourages scrutiny, and depends upon someone in authority looking the other way. In one system, government counts the claims and sends the money without asking who received it or what work was performed. In the other, officials accept registrations without asking who signed them or whether the process was legitimate. Whether Washington is distributing taxpayer dollars or safeguarding the ballot, government processes first and investigates later. Then years after the damage is done, announces an indictment and expects applause. Fraud is not an ordinary cost to government. It is theft, theft of taxpayers' earnings, theft of needed services, and theft of the legit the legitimate vote. Our witnesses went where government investigators had not gone and asked the questions the bureaucracy refused to ask. I thank them for their relentless commitment to exposing fraud and demanding accountability. The American people deserve better from their government, including Congress, who keeps writing the checks. Senator Peters.

Thank you, uh, Chairman Paul. The, uh, the government has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. And when there is evidence of waste, fraud and abuse in taxpayer funded programs, the government must take action to recover the cost and hold wrongdoers accountable. My time serving in this committee, I have been proud to work across the aisle with uh many of my colleagues to improve oversight of taxpayer dollars and fight fraud. I worked with Senator Ernst, and Senator Hassan to pass bipartisan legislation to prevent conflicts of interest in federal contracts. After learning that a company was being paid with tax dollars to advise the government on oversight of the pharmaceutical industry while simultaneously being paid by pharma companies to help market their drugs. We passed a bill to end this practice and to make sure the taxpayer dollars are being used in Americans' best interest. I worked with Senator Kennedy to pass a bipartisan bill to improve government data access, which will save millions of taxpayer dollars by preventing improper payments to deceased people. I worked with Senator Carper and Senator McCaskill to block scams that were hurting small businesses by fraudulently selling services to secure government contracts, services that the government already provides to small businesses for free. And when Congress was responding to the un- Precedented COVID-nineteen pandemic with significant emergency spending, I worked with Senator Johnson to establish the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. We fought to ensure that there were strong oversight mechanisms, and uh, including alongside those resources because we knew that bad actors would try to take advantage of the situation. To date, the PRAC has supported more than fifty investigative partners in over twelve hundred investigations. and has identified two point five billion dollars in potential fraud that is that the government is now continuing to try to recover. In fact, the PRAC uh model has been so successful that Chairman Paul uh, you worked to expand its oversight responsibilities as part of the big, beautiful bill. It is an unfortunate reality that there is always the risk of fraud in government programs, which is why we need strong controls. A strong oversight of government spending to insure taxpayer dollars, are going to help the American people and not the fraudsters. Our federal government had more of these strong oversight mechanisms up until last year when President Trump fired nineteen in an independent inspector generals in violation of the law. He removed experienced independent investigators with a strong record of identifying waste and fraud and replaced them with cronies. It's hard to overstate the damage that has been done to independent oversight. Many of the watchdogs we count on to identify wrongdoings are now fearful that they will be fired or retaliated against just for doing their job. On top of that, President Trump created Doge and let inexperienced staffers, led by Elon Musk, make arbitrary cuts across the federal government. Doge was supposed to save a trillion dollars. Instead, their reckless cuts caused chaos and may have actually cost taxpayers more in the long run. as the administration had to rehire workers and reinstate contracts that they cancelled. Mister Chairman, I ask you now as consent to enter into the record a report that I released uh last May.

Without objection.

Thank you. This report uh which found that the federal government could have saved taxpayers more than one hundred and seventy-five billion by implementing recommendations from the nineteen independent inspector generals that President Trump fired unlawfully. Far more money than Doge ever delivered. President Trump is also proposing a new scheme to control federal grant dollars that will allow him to direct taxpayer dollars to political allies and punish partisan enemies all while undermining independent oversight. Not only have President Trump's actions created an environment where fraud can thrive but incredibly he has also pardoned multiple convicted fraudsters who have combined have committed billions of dollars worth of fraud pardoned by President Trump. These pardons wiped out an estimated one point three billion in restitution and have frequently gone to wealthy and well-connected individuals. It sends a signal that you have money or the President's favor. You can commit fraud without consequence. And finally, if we're gonna talk about fraud, waste, and abuse, we must also talk about how President Trump has abused his public office to enrich himself, and his family not improve the everyday lives of Americans who or protect taxpayer dollars. Since taking office in twenty twenty five, President Trump and his family has made an estimated two billion dollars from cryptocurrency alone. And if this committee is serious about tackling fraud, I hope we could work together to hold the administration accountable for the ways in which they have undercut independent oversight, and fulfill our own role to conduct oversight of the administration's actions that have unquestionably enabled fraud. We need to restore the strong experienced independent watchdogs who have a proven track record of fight fighting fraud and getting money back for the American people, rather than amplifying sensationalized social media that takes a more focused uh on getting views than on actually getting the truth. Mister Chairman, we share the goal of saving taxpayer dollars and making our government more efficient. And when you're ready to bring in federal officials to testify, conduct oversight, and advance additional legislation to crack down on fraud, my colleagues and I are ready to do the work. Thank you, Mister Chairman.

It is the practice of this committee to swear in witnesses. Will each of you please stand and raise your right hand? Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you God. thank you may be seated our first first witness will be uh nick shirley he is an independent journalist known for his on the ground investigations which he publishes on his social media pages, and the anti-fraud club website, mister shirley

my name is nick shirley i'm a one hundred percent independent journalist who seeks each day to serve uh we the people of the united states with the mission to show the world the reality of things as they really are america was built and created by strong men and women who loved america and never would have thought to rob steal or cheat from it's very own citizens unfortunately today america's good faith has been abused by others often foreigners who seek to harm rob and cheat america through my efforts i've exposed billions of dollars of fraud and helped save america hundreds of billions for years to come when we talk about fraud we are talking about money that is being stolen from hardworking law-abiding taxpaying citizens this issue has nothing to do with political parties no dollar says republican or democrat on it when a fraudster commits fraud he or she steals from all of us last december i published a forty three minute long video exposing widespread widespread fraud in minnesota that video became one of the most viewed videos in internet history and gained over four billion views in just seven days across all forms of media the fraud was so obvious that the fraudsters weren't even trying to hide it. The infamous quality layering center was born, and that video has become one of the most consequential videos in America history, by the amount of legislation it has created. Since posting it, over thirty bills have been created, and introduced in Congress regarding fraud. A new fraud task force has been created, and the treasury is working on new systems to stop fraud at unprecedented levels. I helped ignite a war on fraud across the country. People often wonder how come this fraud became so big and how come it become so rampant and the the reason is because no one actually ever really looked into it when elon musk offered to help by creating doge people burned his factories bombed his cars and politicians even celebrated his company's stock going down elon was right when he said the fraudsters complained the loudest by exposing the fraud i actually also exposed the politicians and median and and media who worked for years to cover it up governor tim walter labeled my work as white supremacy and called me a far right delusional meanwhile he dropped out of re-election and he even said he has ended his political career now the highest government funded daycare in Minnesota has pleaded guilty to daycare fraud and the largest autism bust in America history has been exposed where is Tim Walton in the media now it just so happens that over eighty percent of the fraud committed in Minnesota is by the Somali population after Minnesota I exposed widespread fraud in California within the daycare and hospice community where an impossible one third of Americans on hospice care were set to die in Los Angeles. The next day, the governor, Gavin Newsom, posted an AI generant image of myself, trying to mock and discredit my work. Only days later, he and his attorney general both, tried to take credit for exposing the fraud. Now the attorney general's wife has created a bill that would make it criminal to expose fraud. The Stop Nick Shirley Act, also known as AB twenty six twenty four, will help fraudsters cover up their crimes and prevent themselves from being exposed, specifically in immigrant communities. Politicians often use immigrant immigrant communities to commit fraud. Why would uh why would they allow this to happen? In California, Medical, their Medicaid program has now more than doubled from a hundred and eight billion dollars in two thousand twenty two to a proposed twenty two two hundred and twenty two billion while enrollment has only rose by less than one percent. The system is filled with bad actors and fraudsters. in new york city government funded adult daycares pay for elderly koreans and chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi at the taxpayer's expense at the taxpayer's expense an impossible number of patients are registered and those patients receive kickbacks for attending and signing up their friends over two billion dollars has gone to these fraudsters at the taxpayer's expense and i'm just one person doing the work of many people if the government and media is not gonna do their job to help america it's the responsibility of strong men, and women, however old they may be, to do it. I am doing it, despite the threats and burdens that come, it must be done. I am doing it with the help of everyday Americans. That government paid officials, are, supposed to do. And the media teams across the country have, millions of dollars to do this, yet they don't, look into this fraud. They've actually quite, literally failed us. If we as Americans do not stand up to protect our country, we will lose our country. Fraud is so rampant in the United States, I could go to all fifty States, and uncover millions of dollars of tax, dollars being defrauded. Wasted and abused, is my wish while sitting in front of you guys today, that you take action, help Americans by, by cracking down on all the fraud. And to simply put Americans first. Thank you.

Our next witness is James O'Keefe. He's an American investigative journalist and media entrepreneur. He's the founder of Project Veritas, and currently serves as the founder and CEO of O'Keefe Media Group. Mister O'Keefe.

Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, and members of this committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. In February of two thousand twenty six, I disguised myself as a homeless person, and approached a petition circulator on Skid Row near San Pedro and South uh Sixth Street in downtown LA. I saw cash, clipped to his shirt which I thought was odd. The petition circulator told me, we're gonna need fourteen signatures and we're gonna pay you two dollars. One of our reporters disguised as a heroin addict, with track marks on his arm, asked the homeless what's going on here. They all replied with one word, money. We recorded a woman named Brown handing over cash as payment in exchange for a homeless person to register to vote in a federal election. Now that is a federal crime. Congress expressly criminalizes payments to people to register to vote. Why? Because the vote is sacred. It's an act of conscience, of judgment. And when it becomes contaminated by incentives, when it is for sale, it undermines the sanctity and fairness of the process designed to elect those who represent us. Our investigation contributed to a federal criminal prosecution, with US Attorney Bill Asalia saying, " Once I saw these videos, I went to work." Brown described the whole thing as a quote " pyramid game". And then came the irony. In the neighborhood of NGOs in Los Angeles, designed to protect the vulnerable homeless population, The person being confronted by the NGOs was not the fraudster, it was the reporter exposing the fraud. Just minutes after we exposed these felonies, I was approached by a man who identified himself as being with the LAPD, and he began to record me. When I pressed him, he admitted he was actually with the LA Homelesses Authority. Under California law, that's a crime. So this was also a form of fraud, albeit covering up for the fraud happening across the street. But it got worse. We witnessed petition circulators giving marijuana in exchange for signatures on the petitions. And when they spotted our camera, uh, they told one of our reporters, " I'm gonna knock your bleeping ass. Don't come over here again. I'm gonna beat your ass." He threatened us. So we decided to band together. We formed a Citizen Journalism Justice League, featuring Savannah Hernandez, Kim Higby, Anthony Rubin, and John Trow. And over the next few weeks we caught dozens of these cash and drug exchanges for signatures on the petitions. Together, over the course of those next few weeks, we released reporting that prompted the governor of California not to attack us, But to say that what we did was was important, and the activity should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We also found, next, ballot petitioners asking homeless to sign in other people's names. We recorded over the shoulder, one petitioner who took out his phone to access an on-line database to pull voter rolls and addresses. Quote, " I have an Idaho address," said the voter. The petitioner says, " I'm going to give you an address to write. Your name is Robert." Another says, " I'm giving you a new name." So we visited the residence of those people who were disenfranchised. One of the names was Vicki Walker. The homeowner at that address said for nine years he received election mail in name of this Vicki Walker. In fact, he told me he'd received so many ballots in the name of Vicki Walker, he named his cat Vicki Walker. We returned to ask for comment from the petitioner who was offering drugs in exchange for signatures. The same individual who had threatened us earlier, he grabbed the petitions and hid them in his car. When we caught up to him, one of his associates charged at us, and punched my producer in the neck. The two men then charged at me. And right before they struck us, Kim Higby deployed pepper spray. With pepper spray in their eyes, the two men continued to attempt to assail us. My colleague Braden and I had no choice but to run for our lives. To this day, all the fraudsters that committed state crimes roam free. This, as Nick has said, is not a political issue. It's not a partisan issue. It's not a conspiracy theory. And it is most certainly not circumstantial evidence. Everything I've testified to you here, all the quotes, and many more, are all recorded on tape. So the question, before this committee, is not whether the fraud exists, or whether it's happening. Oftentimes, in politics you all debate the facts. The facts are what they are. The question is why the incentives allow it to flourish. There is money in fraud. But there's no money in exposing the fraud. And when laws are ignored, without consequences, fraud becomes the incentive. Fraud becomes the model of life. Tony Moore, one of the coordinators for the ballot petitions told us, if there's no consequences, it doesn't matter. And that's the point. I don't have subpoena power. Us journalists don't have the power to do anything but expose. They campaign in this building about freedom and protecting democracy and preventing disenfranchisement. and how nobody is above the law. But if those principles are not enforced, when they are violated in broad daylight, they're not principles at all. They're slogans. And without accountability, our notion of freedom is just an illusion. Thank you.

Senator Peters will introduce our third witness.

Mister uh Dylan uh Miller-Gadet is the uh acting Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, commonly known as POGO. Mister Hetler-Gerret is a nationally recognized expert in a range of good government issues including government ethics, anti-corruption policy, separation of powers, the rule of law, and government operations integrity and effectiveness. He has testified before Congress on eight separate occasions on a variety of topics, including preventing waste and fraud, defense, spending, accountability, judicial eth- ethics, and undue foreign influence. Uh, Mister, uh, uh, Hitler, Gidette, and Pogo have routinely engaged with Congress on bipartisan and pragmatic solutions to address government program integrity and protect taxpayer dollars. Thank you for joining us today and, uh, we appreciate your testimony.

Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Dylan Hetler-Gaudet and I am the Acting Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs at the Project on Government Oversight. We are a non-partisan, independent watchdog organization with forty-five years of experience in promoting accountability, transparency, and effectiveness in the federal government. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to start with some data to paint a bit of a picture for us. We currently spend about seven trillion dollars a year in terms of our federal budget. In fiscal year twenty twenty five, we ran a one point eight trillion dollar federal budget deficit. We currently carry a federal debt load of about forty trillion dollars. And payments on that, I'm sorry, interest payments on that debt are the third largest annual expenditure we make each year, the fourth largest of which is our defense budget, which now comes in at a cool one trillion dollars. And if President Trump has his way, that number will balloon to a staggering one point five trillion dollars this year. Why do I start with this big picture data? It's important to realize that vast sums of taxpayer dollars are at stake when we talk about the issues of waste fraud and abuse. It's equally important to remember that the federal government has an equally vast responsibility and an obligation to be the best possible and most responsible caretaker and steward of those taxpayer dollars. We have more data that can tell us a little bit about how well the federal government is delivering on that responsibility. Recently, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in which it estimated that in fiscal year twenty twenty five the federal government issued one hundred and eighty-six billion dollars in improper payments, bringing the total of improper payments issued since fiscal year two thousand three to three trillion dollars or thereabouts. GAO also estimated that in twenty twenty four alone we lost somewhere between two hundred and thirty and five hundred and twenty billion dollars to fraud. Lastly, GAO tells us and projects that if we were to work harder to eradicate duplication, fragmentation, and overlap in federal government programs, we would be, we would be able to save one hundred billion dollars a year. Now, what does this data tell us? This tells us, pretty categorically, that we, and in particular the federal government, are not doing a good enough job overseeing and managing the country's precious public resources. And the only way to get there is to promote actionable, common sense, pragmatic reforms and it is those exact kinds of reforms that i'm here to talk about today first we must look to internal watchdogs and oversight practitioners such as inspector general the government accountability office the office of government ethics the office of special counsel and others and we must strengthen empower and fully resource them to perform their essential functions at the taxpayers eyes and ears and within the federal government second We must also provide safe and secure reporting and disclosure channels for federal whistleblowers. Courageous individuals from within the government often blow the whistle and expose some of the worst ways fraud abuse corruption and malfeasance, and they are often all too common on the receiving end of reprisal and retaliation for doing so. It is imperative that Congress create these safe and secure disclosure channels while also strengthening protections for retaliation and reprisal for federal whistleblowers. Lastly, federal government currently uses to monitor, track, analyze, and assess federal funding is woefully inadequate. Key databases and resources like USAspending.gov and the system for award management are in desperate need of overhaul and modernization. Congress should start by dramatically expanding the quality and quantity of the data and information required to be reported and collected up and down the spending chain. Congress should also work to bring parity in data collection and information reporting across program categories and spending types. Lastly, Congress should also hold federal agencies' feet to the fire to comply with existing reporting and disclosure requirements, which agencies are often not doing at all. The upshot here is that waste, fraud, abuse and corruption are real, and they are pernicious, and we must do something about them. The only way we're gonna solve them is by some of the reforms and others that I have laid out here today but we're not going to solve them by focusing on sensationalistic anecdotes Clout chasing viral internet videos are provocative pseudo-documentaries. We're also not going to solve these problems by demonizing and scapegoating specific communities and constituencies based on partisan political and ideological agendas. Thank you again for inviting me here to testify today, and I look forward to your questions.

We're gonna be, get a round of questions, and I'm gonna defer my time to Senator Johnson.

Hey, Mr. Chairman. Um, so, so we've had in testimony and opening statements a couple jabs I guess at uh Nick Shirley's videos. Uh the only reason that we're taking fraud seriously is because of that independent journalism sitting in front of us. Uh the the fact that he exposed in all its gory detail how grotesque and how blatant this fraud is, how rampant it is. So yeah, Mister uh Hitler Gaudet, I, listen, I agree with most of your prescriptions here. Uh, Chairman of the Committee, we had you testify. I Been trying to support them, Inspector General's, now we've had to uh, got a couple of Inspector Generals resigning ahead of the posse. Cuz they're certainly not perfect as well. But the problem I have with all the prescriptions is it hasn't worked. The the lowest estimate I hear fraud in federal government is two hundred fifty billion dollars a year. I think you said two thirty. We had in a subcommittee uh hearing, LexisNexis saying it's a trillion dollars. It it wasn't really until this administration with Doge, which is, you know, that effort's also been denigrated here, that we started going in there and actually doing something about it. Now you have Doctor Oz going in again, I think uh partly because of Nick Shirley's uh uh revelation that a third of the hospice centers were in America were in Los Angeles County. So the way we prevent the fraud is we stopped funding four hundred of them and not one of those hospice centers complained. So, so it's the tip of the iceberg. Mister Shirley, again, I I commend you on your phenomenal journalism. I'm, uh, you know, quite honestly, when I saw that happening, oh, why didn't I think of that? You know, why didn't my staff do those videos? Journalism is crucial to this. You're a partner in what we need to do. And it's only because of those videos that expose it that there were, we have any chance of trying to reign in this beast. But uh you you mentioned the stop stop Nick Shirley act. What is that? I mean can you describe that in greater detail?

Yeah, so that's a bill that's been created by Mia Bonta, the wife of the Attorney General of California. And uh the official title is AB twenty six twenty four, and it's to provide uh make it essentially illegal to expose and to film outside of immigration support service providers. That means any uh entity that provides services to illegal migrants, whether that be healthcare or legal fees. If I were to go out and film a video in front of one of these locations, perhaps an NGO like CHIRLA that receives, that's received over eighty million dollars from the government, and they gave me a, and they give me a piece of paper, and they say hey you cannot publish that video. If that, uh, bill passes it'll be illegal for me to

So it really gotta be renamed the Protect Medicating Fraudster Act.

document that.

would probably be a a better description of that, correct?

Correct.

Um, wh- why do you think you have such pushback from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, from uh, you know, just the denigration here from the ranking member, uh from Governor Newsom, wh- wh- why is that? Well, you would think the trying to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse would be a completely non-partisan issue.

Because they quite frankly need the need the fraud. They they actually need the fraud.

You know, Mister Keith, and I I've got a lot more questions, but you're I'm not understanding. What what were these petitions about? You really have to, you you were getting, they were paying money for signatures on petitions. You're generally pushed forward by nongovernmental organizations, which by the way, we don't track how much money is expended. Of the seven and a half trillion dollars they spend this year, we have no idea how much funnels eventually through NGOs. But, so you have Paying dollars for signing petitions, and then you also have paying dollars for voter registration. Do, do, have you kind of followed that through? What, what's that all about?

Yes, Senator, uh, one is a California state crime to, to uh, fraudulently sign in someone else's name, to get something on the California ballot initiative. And the other is a federal crime, where there's federal jurisdiction where you pay someone in order to get them to register to vote.

So again, these, these were petitions to get something, a referendum on the ballot in California.

That's correct.

So what did make sense to me about the the registrations, they were signing up fake names or fake addresses. I would think, you know, how if you're gonna really commit election fraud, you'd sign up legitimate names, legitimate addresses, so that you could ba- basically harvest those ballots and vote for who you want to vote. I mean, have you kind of filed that whole?

Yes. In one instance we looked over the shoulder and a petitioner logged into a website, something called sigvalid.com, and accessed currently registered voters using their real names. and real addresses. We were unable to determine or ascertain what this sigvalid.com is, but we believe that uh your committee has subpoena power to fi- try to find out what that is.

Well that that'd be my my offer. Both uh Chairman Paul and myself have subpoena power. Uh if you need it, uh we're we're more than happy to use it, so I'm making that offer to both Mister Shirley and to you Mister O'Keefe.

We'll follow up with you. Thank you.

Thank you Mister Chairman.

Senator Peters. Mr. um, other guy there. As you know, President Trump uh fired nineteen inspectors general, the uh independent watchdogs uh tasked by Congress with fighting waste, fraud and abuse uh in government programs. On May twenty one, twenty twenty five, I issued a report uh that revealed that in twenty or in fiscal year twenty four alone, those fired I G's had collectively identified over fifty billion dollars of government savings. through their work. Since then, President Trump has fired additional IGs and has cut funding and staff to the oversight agencies, some by more than a third. So my question for you, sir, is do partisan attacks on independent oversight benefit fraudsters?

Yes, I would say they absolutely benefit fraudsters. They politicized the entire endeavor of going after waste, fraud and abuse, which is literally the mission statement and reason for existence of watchdogs like Inspector General.

So how can Congress better support and defend independent and nonpartisan oversight of government programs, in your mi- in your uh estimation?

Sure. So I I touched on this a little bit in my opening statement and in more detail in my written statement but uh there are a number of um pre-existing kind entities such as Inspector General such as the Government Accountability Office who's uh, we don't need to reinvent the wheel there. We just need to strengthen, empower, and protect those entity. We need to give them the resources they need to conduct their important uh work of oversight and most importantly we need to provide more political insulation and independence so that they can do that work without fear or favor and without being overly meddled with by people with partisan and political agendas because that's anathema to any effective oversight.

Right. Mr. Hildegard at um uh Pogo uh has raised concerns about both President Biden and President Trump's use of uh presidential uh pardons. Uh this uh administration has claimed uh to care about fraud, and yet President Trump has pardoned a staggering uh number of convicted fraudsters. To date, he has pardoned over two dozen criminals, uh, who committed a combined nearly fi- or three billion dollars in financial crimes and fraud. Uh, these pardons also robbed victims of approximately one point three billion dollars in restitution payments. They were, uh, given to people like Lawrence Duran, who committed two hundred and five million dollars in Medicare fraud and Trevor Milton, who committed six hundred and eighty million dollars in securities fraud. Mister Milton and his wife, not surprisingly, donated two and a half million dollars to the presidential campaign. So my question for you, sir, is how would you describe pardoning criminal fraudster campaign donors as, uh, an effort to combat fraud?

I would describe it as a completely nonsensical approach to rooting out waste. fraud and abuse and again it undermines any claims one might have to caring about waste fraud and abuse to pardon convicted fraudsters and in the case of one uh florida woman a multiply convicted fraudster who was convicted once uh got a commutation in trump's first term and then was convicted again and got a full pardon in the second term so that does not seem to me like the action of a of an entity that actually cares about fraud perhaps it's just fraud when it's perpetrated by the right people or the wrong people

So what what do you think Congress should do to rein in the misuse of uh presidential pardon power?

This is a tricky one. The pardon power is of course uh constitutionally prescribed. It's pretty stark. Um, you know, I have a personal hobby horse view that uh a constitutional amendment to remove the pardon power should probably be considered because it's a vestigial legacy of a sort of monarchical view of the head of state which is kind of the whole thing we're supposed to be against here in the United States. uh we don't like kings and so the pardon power is very much a kingly a divine right of kings sort of concept but barring that uh i think there are some sort of common sense uh constitutionally viable approaches to more transparencies consultation reporting and disclosure and a bit of a kind of i think a stronger process from within the doj's uh pardon office

thank you you know i've i've been proud to uh enact bipartisan legislation to improve government uh data uh, analytics, enhance oversight capabilities, and prevent payments to dead people. Uh, however, challenges remain, especially as fraudsters have become more sophisticated and government systems and tools, have quite frankly just not kept pace. In fiscal year twenty-five, government agencies estimated that a hundred and eighty-six billion dollars of improper payments were made. So my question for you, uh, Mister Heller-Gadet is what, what practical sc- solutions should Congress prioritize to prevent improper payments and stop fraudulent behavior, while still protecting critical programs that Americans rely on every day.

Thank you. Uh, on end verification is really important. I believe Chairman Paul referred to this in his opening statement. Uh, we we do not do enough of that. Uh, but also end-to-end transparency, reporting and disclosure at every step along the spending and funding chain is critically important. We also don't do much of that. So, you know, I don't need to tell you all this. there in congress but the appropriations process is you all doing your thing with the money, it goes to federal agencies, then federal agencies award it out to prime recipients, but then those prime recipients tend to parcel it out and award it out to a whole range of different spub awardees and spub recipients. That's where we really lose any meaningful insight into where the money is going, who's ending up with it, what is the impact that it's having. So if there was one sort of key sort of close to a silver bullet I would recommend is getting our hands around spub award reporting and transparency all the way up and down the chain from end to end.

thank you

uh i think that hits on the point is the payment's all coming from the federal government but the people being signing them up are not connected to the payment so they're in the states they're local they wanna help people i want more people let's help more people and they add all the people to it but they're not paying for it you have to have the same people paying for it that are signing the people up and until you connect those two people you'll continue to have this problem senator langford

sir paul uh thanks for holding this hearing as well to all of you and the work that you do to help identify fraud and waste uh thank you uh for the work on that it's really about sunshine i am trying to expose this out for nine years i've been releasing what uh my team calls federal fumbles uh where we just outline where areas that we see on waste and abuse and loss of federal dollars over regulation uh and we throw those out there what's been interesting is we've seen the same thing you have uh when we identify the areas of waste people shrink back away from it and say, " OK, now, now we're gonna try to be able to deal with this." It is the sunshine that really does make a difference. And what you're doing is bringing things to light on this. Uh, we've identified things like in two, uh, twenty twenty three, uh, the State Department was funding drag shows in Ecuador. Uh, the NIH, or NEA, I should say, uh, was doing a social media game to increase physical activity in, in older women in creating a social media activity, which is inherently sit there for that. Uh, we had, there was a, NEA created a production of what they call the fat pig, which was an opera to tell the story of a plus size woman who falls in love with a man who has quote unquote a normal body. Uh, we also did an NIH study, uh, in, that gave a research grant to be able to outline the history of tobacco use in Russia. We can go on and on and on through this. Uh, there's multiples that are out there. The Biden administration did a two hundred and fifty million dollar study in nih uh to be able to study how to transition mice and monkeys into a different sex uh and how to create transgender mice and monkeys all of those once we exposed them went away all of them so the challenge is trying to be able to highlight it but also to be able to find it in advance so i wanna run several questions past you and i've got several big issues first carly how were you identifying initially what you're actually finding like you're what what's the tip that you're saying i think there may be fraud there how are you identifying that

yeah lot of it's i go and go through these databases and look for for the largest amount uh of funding and then also looking for the anomalies that come for instance in new york city at these adult daycares there were seven thousand eight hundred and ninety nine patients enrolled into a daycare an adult daycare and they received twelve point nine million dollars and i go to that daycare it's a there's only one floor and it'd be quite frankly impossible to enroll that many patients into that daycare.

Yeah. So it's just going through the available public data on it.

Yes, and then also relying upon Americans. For instance, I have learned about the Minnesota fraud from Minnesotans. I went there and they told me, hey finally you're here to make a video on the front. I said, well what are you talking about? And they said, well this fraud's happening, this fraud's happening. And so for the past, then after that for six months I looked for that information about the fraud.

It's great. Alright, that that's very helpful on this. uh, if you had a look at that, uh, I have a question, it's a follow-up question on this. I'm a big advocate for GAO and for Inspector General. Um, you and I have talked about that before. They're incredibly important to us. Uh, they are the investigators that Congress has hired, basically to be able to put in these different agencies and be able to do oversight. The problem is, they have the same access to data that Mister Shirley has. When we get reports back from them, they're written very general many times and there's specifics and we're not really able to highlight this kind of information, getting the practical information out. So the problem is not GAO and the Inspector General, it's getting the data and the information from them in the rawest form. They could have done this same thing that Mister Shirley did, but they didn't. What would you suggest to help push good folks there to be able to take the next step and expose what's out there?

Thank you, Senator Lankford. And if I might just for one moment, I just wanna um extend my appreciation to you for your work for years starting in the house on the taxpayers right to know act which uh you know this well of course but i don't know if everyone in this room does but it would it created for for the first time a federal program inventory which is seem kind of counter intuitive that such a thing didn't exist for a long time but thanks to your work on that bill uh

yeah

it now does exist so i uh commend you for your long-standing commitment to transparency and oversight when it comes to federal programs