Vice President JD Vance is no longer claiming Haitian immigrants eat cats.
But he remains truth-challenged when it comes to a different topic: babies, and fraud.
Vance, who heads the White House task force against fraud, went to Milwaukee to highlight a case involving a government-funded prenatal healthcare program for at-risk mothers.
The speech got little attention until the White House essentially accused Vance of being a “dumb a--.” That came after the White House Rapid Response 47 account accused an online observer of obscuring the face of a fraudster on a poster Vance displayed.
“Your dumb a-- is shielding a criminal who stole $2.4 million in taxpayer-funded benefits meant to help at-risk pregnant women and women with young kids,” the Rapid Response 47 account posted. A video clip then showed that the “dumb a--” was in fact Vance himself. He had held the poster at an angle; the face was blanked by the glare of the lights.
But the speech, on closer examination, was worse than dumb. It was itself a fraud.
Vance went beyond the routine lying by both political parties. He transposed the facts. A Biden appointee had made the case. And Trump has been relentlessly pardoning fraudsters.
And to make it worse, Vance himself preceded this shameless transposing by talking about his family.
“I care about this very personally,” Vance told a small crowd at a National Guard hangar, adding that his wife, Usha Vance, “is currently pregnant with baby number four.”
“She is 37 weeks pregnant, and I appreciate your prayers,” he added. “I love you, honey. If you’re watching at home.”
He cited an incontrovertible fact about pre-natal care.
“Now, you may not know this, but one of the leading causes of infant mortality in the world is actually not what happens when the baby is born, it’s what happens before the baby is born, when the mom can’t get the medical treatment she needs, when the mom can’t get access to the resources that she needs.”
Vance then stepped into pre-midterm distortion.
“But you know what? In Milwaukee, with the government of this state looking the other way, we had people who were allowing fraudsters to get rich off of that prenatal care without providing a dime of services to the young moms who needed it,” he said.
Behind Vance stood posters reading “FIGHTING FRAUDSTERS” and “PROTECTING TAXPAYER DOLLARS.“ He reached for the poster of 33-year-old Markita Barnes holding a purse. The glare of the lights blanked it out, but from another angle, her facial expression and a notable fashion accessory were clearly visible.
“Look at this woman…with the smug look and the Louis Vuitton bag,” he said. “A woman who quite literally stole from young mothers who needed prenatal care. And the state of Wisconsin, ladies and gentlemen, had to scale down that program because of insufficient funds, so that this woman could go and buy a Louis Vuitton bag.”
Unlike with the fictitious cat-devouring, here was an actual outrage. Barnes had been convicted of fraudulently pocketing $2.3 million intended for pregnant women and new mothers.
“There were young mothers in Wisconsin who did not get access to the prenatal care that they needed,” he continued. “That endangers the moms, that endangers the babies.”
Then he went beyond a lie to transposing the facts, as fraudsters are wont to do. Without actually naming them, he said the Republicans were being tough on fraud while the Democrats were abetting it.
“We’ve got a party that is fighting for fraud and a party that is fighting against fraud,” Vance said. “This is not about better or worse policy. This is about who is supporting fraudsters and who is supporting you.”
Vance failed to say that Barnes had been indicted by a federal grand jury on June 21, 2023, when President Biden was still in office. The case had been preceded by an extended investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The prosecutor who brought the Barnes case, Gregory Haanstad of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, was one of a half dozen U.S. Attorneys who were immediately fired when President Trump assumed office for a second time.
The charges against Barnes remained. She was convicted on Nov. 21, 2025, after a trial where it was established that she had spent pilfered funds intended for babies and new moms, not only on a Louis Vuitton handbag, but also a diamond-encrusted Rolex and a Mercedes-Benz. She was sentenced to 10 years on March 17, and is presently held at the federal prison in Pekin, Illinois.
After the speech, Vance took questions from reporters, who happened to include Mary Spicuzza, one of the Sentinel reporters who helped bring the pre-natal care fraud to light. She inquired, “And what do you do now to make sure that the women and babies who are supposed to be getting help are actually getting help?“ she asked.
Vance’s response sounded less like an impassioned father than a politician bent on imparting a message. “The most important way to ensure that the people who deserve the help, who need the help, actually get it, is to cut down on the fraud,” he said. “‘Cause money doesn’t grow on trees, and there are limited resources.”
Vance ignored an opportunity to accord the media some credit. He sounded remarkably like the fired Haanstad, who spoke after Barnes was indicted in 2023, when Joe Biden was president.
“One of the primary reasons the Department of Justice focuses on prosecuting healthcare fraud is to ensure public funds are used to help the people they are designed to help, and not to unfairly enrich others at the expense of the public and those who desperately need these services,” said then-U.S. Attorney Haanstad.
Another thing Vance didn’t mention: that Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of at least a dozen major healthcare fraudsters.
They include Philip Esformes, a Miami healthcare executive who was sentenced to 20 years for a $1.3 billion Medicare scheme, one of the biggest ever.
Trump commuted his sentence less than 14 months after it was handed down in 2019. There was also Lawrence Duran, who was convicted in 2011 of a $205m Medicare fraud, in which his girlfriend got $87m. His 50-year sentence was commuted too.
So tell us, who are the frauds here?
