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WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate on Tuesday afternoon voted to confirm Colin McDonald as the Justice Department’s first ever assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, a key victory for the Trump administration as it builds out a campaign against fraud in government aid programs.
McDonald, an aide to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and a former federal prosecutor, will head up the new agency section targeting what President Donald Trump has framed as widespread fraud against the federal government.
But critics of the administration have raised concern about whether the president will use fraud accusations to target political opponents — and whether the Justice Department office will remain politically independent from the White House.
The upper chamber voted 52-47 to approve McDonald’s appointment to the role, created by the White House in January to combat what the administration has called “rampant and pervasive” fraud against federal government programs and benefits.
In a statement, Blanche said his former aide was “one of the most effective” attorneys he’s ever worked with.
“The American people should rest easier knowing that Colin will be leading the Justice Department’s new fraud division to root out the rampant abuse of taxpayer dollars, while punishing those who scammed Americans in need of important federal program assistance,” he wrote.
McDonald’s confirmation vote comes just a week after his nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee along party lines. Democrats at the time suggested that the administration official would not make an impartial leader for the Justice Department’s new fraud office, pointing to his involvement with a Trump-created agency working group aimed at uncovering past “weaponization” of the justice system against the president.
“He is more committed to scoring political points than he is to uncovering waste fraud and abuse,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said of McDonald last week. The top committee Democrat argued that the “real purpose” of the Justice Department’s fraud division was to “weaponize fraud enforcement against the president’s opponents.”
Lawmakers have also been concerned about the new fraud division’s chain of command and how it will interact with a similar anti-fraud group unveiled by the White House last week.
After Trump in January announced he would stand up a fraud enforcement team at the Justice Department, Vice President JD Vance claimed the division would be “run out of the White House.” But an agency organization chart showed that the assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement would report to the deputy attorney general and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Further complicating things, Trump last week signed an executive order establishing a White House-level fraud enforcement team spearheaded by Vance and FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson. The order stipulated that an “appropriate representative” of the Justice Department would serve on that task force, presumably the agency deputy in charge of fraud.
Responding to written questions last month, McDonald told lawmakers that, if confirmed, he would report to Blanche as laid out in the organization chart. He did not directly respond to questions about whether Vance or Ferguson would have any jurisdiction over his work.
During his nomination hearing, McDonald also largely sidestepped questions about his involvement with the Justice Department’s “weaponization” working group.
Though he acknowledged that he’d been “involved” with the team probing ill-fated federal prosecutions against Trump and people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, the nominee said it was one of his “many” responsibilities as a deputy to Blanche. He added that he agreed with the working group’s mission to uncover the “underlying facts and circumstances” of the criminal probes during the Biden administration.
Republicans, meanwhile, have positioned McDonald as eminently qualified for the role. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said the nominee was “highly regarded” and an expert in fraud protection. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he was “well-suited” to the job.
“Colin McDonald is a career federal prosecutor, which means for his entire career, he has had only one client, and that’s the American people,” Thune said on the Senate floor Monday.
Before joining the Justice Department, McDonald was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California.
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