SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
fraud
Trump DOJ Slammed for 'Desperate' Attempt at Retribution After Subpoenas for NY AG James
"Attorney General James took on Trump's fraud... and won," said New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. "So it's little wonder that Trump's politicized DOJ is now coming after her."
Aug 08, 2025
A lawyer representing New York's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Letitia James, said Friday that the news of the Trump administration's investigation into James and her successful legal cases against President Donald Trump amounted to "the most blatant and desperate example" of the president's "political retribution campaign."
In recent days, The Washington Post reported Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a subpoena to James as part of an investigation into whether the attorney general, a longtime adversary of Trump, violated the president's civil rights when she successfully sued him and his real estate business for fraud.
A second subpoena was related to James' litigation against the National Rifle Association, in which a New York jury found last year that former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and other executives had engaged in rampant corruption.
The civil rights statute that the Trump administration is reportedly using to investigate James' case against the president is typically used in cases related to law enforcement officers discriminating against or mistreating people based on race, religion, sex, or ethnicity. According to The New York Times, the DOJ is arguing that James used her law enforcement authority to deprive Trump of his rights.
James filed a civil fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization in 2022 and won a $450 million judgment against the president in penalties plus interest. The interest the president owes has grown to half a billion dollars as he has refused to pay and has appealed the ruling.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engeron said that Trump and his company's executives were "incapable of admitting the error of their ways" regarding the "blatantly false financial data" they used to misrepresent of the value of their properties, which allowed them to get better loan and insurance rates.
The Democratic candidate in the New York City mayoral race, state Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-36), expressed little surprise that Trump was apparently retaliating against the attorney general who won against him in court.
"Attorney General James took on Trump's fraud and the NRA's rampant corruption—and won both cases," said Mamdani. "So it's little wonder that Trump's politicized DOJ is now coming after her. The people of New York stand with their lawyer and champion."
The subpoenas were issued months after the DOJ appeared to try another tactic to punish James when it opened a criminal investigation into alleged mortgage fraud, accusing the attorney general of lying on loan documents for a home that she purchased in Virginia and saying the home would be her primary residence. James' attorneys have said the error was an honest mistake.
Dana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan, came to James' defense on Friday and condemned "the depths to which Trump and his cronies will go to exact vengeance upon anyone who has dared to hold him accountable."
But the subpoenas, said Nessel, are not just a concern for James.
"Americans should know and understand how deeply compromised our federal law enforcement agencies are," she said. "If this can happen to AG James, it can happen to anyone."
Geoff Burgan, a spokesperson for James, agreed that "any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American."
"We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers' rights," said Burgan.
Abbe Lowell, the attorney general's lawyer, said that "weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration."
"If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth," said Lowell, "we are ready and waiting with facts and the law."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Outrageous Lies': Claiming Fraud, Trump Floats Kicking Millions Off Social Security
"They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us," said the president of Social Security Works.
Feb 19, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump launched his latest threat against Social Security on Tuesday under the guise of combating fraud, floating the possibility of stripping benefits from "millions of people" as Elon Musk's lieutenants infiltrate the agency that administers the nation's most effective anti-poverty program.
"The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent... all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people 80 and 70 and 90 but not 200 [years old]."
"We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old" who are receiving Social Security payments, Trump continued.
The Republican president did not provide any evidence for his claim of substantial fraud in the Social Security program, which provides benefits to roughly 70 million Americans. Musk has similarly claimed, without evidence, that "tens of millions of people [are] marked in Social Security as 'ALIVE' when they are definitely dead."
Watch Trump's comments:
Trump: We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old. Everybody knows that's not so. We have a very corrupt country, a very corrupt country. The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they're obviously… pic.twitter.com/OwwxJ6difQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2025
A 2024 report from SSA's inspector general found that just 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly. Trump recently fired the SSA inspector general, along with more than a dozen other agency watchdogs.
Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Wednesday that Trump's remarks about purported Social Security fraud were "outrageous lies."
"Social Security has vanishingly small amounts of fraud, which are generally quickly uncovered when the agency is adequately funded," said Altman. "Trump and Musk are intentionally undermining confidence in our Social Security system. They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us."
On Tuesday, Fox News aired a joint interview with Trump and Musk in which the president pledged that "Social Security won't be touched... other than if there's fraud or something."
"We're going to find it," Trump added.
"Musk’s baseless claims of massive fraud are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut."
The Associated Press reported that "over the past few days, President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200, and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits—a 'HUGE problem,' Musk wrote."
But AP noted that "as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old."
The outlet added that "part of the confusion comes from Social Security's software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago."
Trump's latest attack on the Social Security system came after the SSA's acting commissioner resigned this past weekend over a clash with Musk lieutenants who sought access to highly sensitive Social Security data.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Tuesday that "despite President Trump's promise not to touch Social Security, Elon Musk has gained access to the system that cuts your grandmother's Social Security check and is wreaking havoc."
"Musk's baseless claims of massive fraud," Jacquez added, "are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Going Against Trump Policies Is Not Fraud': White House Panned Over Absurd Defense of DOGE
Reporters and news outlets, argued one critic, "should frame Musk's attack on the liberal and administrative state as an ideological project, not one concerned with some type of value-neutral 'efficiency' or 'cost-cutting.'"
Feb 13, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made a show Wednesday of providing "receipts" to bolster the Trump administration's claim that an Elon Musk-led advisory commission known as DOGE has already uncovered massive fraud at federal agencies.
"There's a lot of paper we can show you," Leavitt declared.
But a closer look at the evidence Leavitt presented to members of the press underscores the ridiculous sleight of hand the Trump White House is using as it attempts to justify Musk and his lieutenants' lawless rampage through departments responsible for overseeing the nation's public education system, dispersing Social Security benefits, and supporting lifesaving medical research, among other critical functions.
The documents Leavitt waved during Wednesday's briefing were screenshots of contracts purportedly "found" by the Musk-led DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, which has dispatched staffers—many of them with close ties to Musk—across more than a dozen federal agencies.
One of the items Leavitt highlighted was a $36,000 contract for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Another was a roughly $57,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture for climate change mitigation efforts in Sri Lanka.
Neither of those examples, nor any of the others Leavitt cited, constitute evidence of fraud—a point that one reporter pushed the press secretary to address during the briefing Wednesday.
“Are all those things you just mentioned fraud?" asked CBS News reporter Jennifer Jacobs. "Or are they just contrary to the president's policies?"
Leavitt's reply indicated to critics that the Trump administration is defining as "fraudulent" programs which it opposes, a narrative that depicts the administration's attacks on federal agencies and spending as commonsense efforts to rein in abuse—rather than a far-right demolition project spearheaded by an unelected billionaire with glaring conflicts of interest.
"I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent, they are wasteful, and they are an abuse of the American taxpayer's dollar," Leavitt insisted. "This is not what the government should be spending money on. It's contrary to the president's priorities and agenda."
Journalist Aaron Rupar wrote in response to Leavitt that "going against Trump's policies is not fraud." (The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has estimated that the federal government could lose up to $521 billion to fraud per year, defines fraud as "the act of obtaining something of value through willful misrepresentation, which is determined through a court or other adjudicative system.")
Watch the press secretary's remarks:
JACOBS: Are all those things you just mentioned fraud? Or all they just contrary to the president's policies?
LEAVITT: I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent.
(They are not fraudulent.) pic.twitter.com/TMehAQOu3O
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 12, 2025
Journalist and media critic Adam Johnson welcomed the growing push for concrete evidence regarding the large-scale fraud DOGE purports to have revealed during the first 30 days of Trump's second White House term.
"Musk's definition of 'fraud' is 'spending priorities duly approved by Congress and previous presidents (including Trump 1.0!) that the richest person on Earth randomly decided he doesn't like,'" Johnson wrote on social media. "This is obviously not a very honest or useful criteria for 'fraud' and thus reporters should frame Musk's attack on the liberal and administrative state as an ideological project, not one concerned with some type of value-neutral 'efficiency' or 'cost-cutting.'"
Reuters noted Wednesday that "of the 15 agencies Musk's team have targeted so far, nine were singled out for elimination or downsizing in Project 2025."
A former Republican staffer acknowledged to Reuters that DOGE's playbook thus far "has not been for the dollar savings, but more for the philosophical and ideological differences conservatives have with the work these agencies do."
"It's clearly a bad-faith effort rooted in ignorance and a knee-jerk desire to shrink the federal government, both for ideological reasons and the creation of space to preserve the tax cuts for the rich."
Since the formal inception of DOGE at the start of Trump's new term, critics have expressed deep skepticism over the advisory body's stated mission of identifying and rooting out fraudulent federal spending and regulations, particularly given its leader's ideological and financial commitments and motivations.
"It's clearly a bad-faith effort rooted in ignorance and a knee-jerk desire to shrink the federal government, both for ideological reasons and the creation of space to preserve the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that will be locked-in later this year," Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote last month.
In testimony before the House Oversight Committee earlier this week, Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that "if President Trump was serious about promoting government efficiency," he would have "prioritized strengthening... already-existing independent government watchdogs," such as inspectors general across federal departments.
Instead, Trump fired inspectors general en masse, a move that—according to Sherman—"substantially increases the risk that government waste and fraud will go undetected, and unremediated."
Even when its stated objectives are taken at face value, DOGE has not lived up to the lofty rhetoric of its leader and boosters inside and outside the Trump administration.
Speaking to reporters with Musk at his side earlier this week, Trump claimed without a shred of evidence that DOGE has already found "tens of billions of dollars" in improper government spending. The president added that "when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to a trillion"—Musk's stated goal.
But The Washington Post noted that Trump's figure doesn't "come anywhere close" to matching numbers DOGE has posted on its X account.
"We added up all the figures posted, taking most of them at face value, though virtually no documentation was presented," the Post observed. "The numbers add up to about $6 billion a year, though $4 billion comes from a proposed cap on National Institutes of Health research overhead payments to universities, medical centers, and other grant recipients. A judge has blocked that for now."
The Post's Aaron Blake wrote in a column Thursday that "Trump would indeed seem to believe that many things he simply doesn't like or agree with are fraudulent, which helps explain the White House's posture right now."
"But that doesn't mean they are fraudulent," he added. "And that's a problem when you're using that as your justification for dismantling large portions of the government."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular