WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead a new Justice Department division focused on prosecuting fraud, despite critics’ concerns over potential political pressure to target White House opponents.
Colin McDonald, a top aide to the Justice Department’s second-in-command, was confirmed in a vote of 52 to 47 to serve as the assistant attorney general in charge of the new division cast by the Trump administration as a necessary effort to crack down on rampant fraud hurting American taxpayers.
“Colin is an experienced, skilled, and tough prosecutor who will continue doing incredible work to root out fraud across America,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post.
McDonald will be tasked with building up the new unit amid intense scrutiny over the White House’s role in investigations and prosecutions normally insulated from political influence. The Justice Department has long prosecuted fraud nationally through its Criminal Division, raising questions about the true purpose of the new unit that the Trump administration initially said would be “run out of the White House.”
The administration has since walked back suggestions that McDonald would report directly to the White House instead of senior Justice Department leaders. Even so, the White House has made clear it will play a major role in shaping the new division’s priorities, with Vice President JD Vance put in charge of the administration’s declared “war on fraud.”
In his confirmation hearing last month, McDonald told lawmakers he would pursue prosecutions “without fear or favor,” but didn’t directly answer when pressed over whether he would follow an order from the president to open a certain investigation.
McDonald’s hearing also left open many questions about how the National Fraud Enforcement Division would differentiate itself from the Criminal Division’s fraud section, which last year charged 265 people — up more than 10% from the year before. The fraud section last year led the largest coordinated takedown of health care fraud schemes in Justice Department history totaling nearly $15 billion in false claims.
The new division is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to spotlight fraud around the country. That followed allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis that prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city and led to widespread protests. Minnesota had already been under intense scrutiny for years for fraud, including a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future that led to dozens of convictions under the Biden and Trump administrations.
“The problem is massive,” McDonald of fraud nationally during his confirmation hearing. “And so President Trump and the attorney general were right to identify this as a place where we needed to put significantly more focus.”
McDonald most recently worked in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office at Justice Department headquarters. Before that, he spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, serving in a variety of roles, including deputy chief of the Southern District of California’s Border Enforcement Section.
