▶ 0:15:21Chair Paul: I don't see no witnesses. I don't see our witnesses. No, I will just wait. They are coming. We are getting there.
▶ 0:16:21Chair Paul: 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 $40 trillion. 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.
▶ 0:16:52Chair Paul: The federal government loses hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud every year. When the money disappears, politicians act surprised. No private business would survive this way. A bank confirms an account exists for wiring the money. A credit card company flags suspicious changes in seconds. An insurance company verifies the patient exists and the treatment occurred before paying the claim. They verify first because it is there money that is on the line. The money belongs to the taxpayer.
▶ 0:17:23Chair Paul: 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 suppose dickerson is that had collected millions of dollars from taxpayers. He found industrial buildings with blackout windows come and no playground, no children, no employees, no one answering the door. These were not complicated accounting irregularities buried deep inside a database. The question was obvious.
▶ 0:17:54Chair Paul: What are taxpayers paying for? Mr. shirley found the same signs at other providers collecting large government reimbursements. In california, he found hospice and health care companies stacked into single office complexes, so marked by nothing more than a sheet of printer paper taped to a door. Many could not answer basic questions about their own patients. A private insurer would have stopped payment immediately. The federal government kept writing the checks.
▶ 0:18:21Chair Paul: Prosecutors are now charged that have now charged 50 people in minnesota with schemes worth more than $90 million. Loan autism schemes alone, 46 point $6 billion in fraud. The justice department calls it the largest fraud case in its history. Persecution is necessary, 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.
▶ 0:18:53Chair Paul: Government should verify before it pays. Does the provider exist? Are real people performing real work? Are the patient eligible? Are they honest? It is what hard-working taxpayers deserve. When government refuses to verify, it is not merely endanger taxpayer dollars. It destroys public confidence in our elections.
▶ 0:19:18Chair Paul: In california, james o'keefe revealed a cash for ballots election fraud scheme targeting homeless men who were offered things and extend for signatures on petitions and voter registration forms. So far, one individual pled guilty to charges. Mr. shirley follow the money. Mr. o'keefe follow the signatures.
▶ 0:19:41Chair Paul: But 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 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.
▶ 0:20:07Chair Paul: Whether washington is just are putting taxpayer dollars or safeguarding the ballot, government process is first an d investigate later and years later announces an indictment and expects applause. Fraud is not an ordinary cost of government. It is theft. Theft of taxpayers earnings. Theft of needed services. And theft of the legitimate vote. Our witnesses winter where government investigators had not gone and asked the questions bureaucracy refused to ask.
▶ 0:20:37Chair Paul: I thank them for their relentlessness. The american people deserve better from the government, including congress who keeps writing the checks. Senator peters.
▶ 0:20:53Sen. Peters: Thank you, chairman paul. The government has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. 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.
▶ 0:21:16Sen. Peters: My time serving in this committee, I have been proud to work across the aisle with 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 conflict of interest in federal contracts. After learning that a company was being paid with tax dollars to advise the government oversight of the pharmaceutical industry while simultaneously being paid by pharma companies to help market their drugs.
▶ 0:21:47Sen. Peters: We passed a bill to end this practice and make sure that taxpayer dollars were being used in americans's best interest. I worked with senator kennedy to pass a bipartisan bill to approve 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.
▶ 0:22:16Sen. Peters: Services the government already provides to small businesses for free. And when congress was responding to the unprecedented covid-19 pandemic with significant emergency spending, I worked with senator johnson to establish the pandemic response accountability committee. We fought to ensure there was strong oversight mechanisms, including alongside those resources, because we knew bad actors would try to take advantage of the situation.
▶ 0:22:44Sen. Peters: To date, it has supported more than 50 investigative partners and over 1200 investigations and has identified $2.5 billion in potential fraud the government is now continuing to try to recover. In fact, the prac model has been so successful that chairman paul worked to expand its oversight committees comm as part of the big beautifl bill. There is always at risk of fraud in government programs, which is why we need strong controls.
▶ 0:23:16Sen. Peters: A strong oversight of government spending to ensure taxpayer dollars are going to help the american people and not the fraudsters. Our friends and government had more of the strong oversight mechanisms up until last year when president trump fired 19 independent inspector general's in violation of the law. He removed experienced, independent investigators with a strong record of identifying waste and fraud and replaced them with cronies.
▶ 0:23:46Sen. Peters: It is 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 they will be fired or retaliated against just for doing their job. On top of that, president trump created does and the inexperienced staffers led by elon musk make arbitrary cuts across the federal government. Doge was supposed to save $1 trillion.
▶ 0:24:13Sen. Peters: Instead, their reckless cuts cost chaos and may have cost taxpayers more in the long run as the administration had to rehire workers and reinstate contracts that they canceled. Mr. chairman, I ask you to miss consent to enter into the record a report I released last may.
▶ 0:24:28Chair Paul: Without objection.
▶ 0:24:29Sen. Peters: Thank you. This report which found the federal government could have saved taxpayers more than $175 billion by implement and recommendations from the 19 independent inspector generals that president trump fired unlawfully. Far more money than doge ever delivered.
▶ 0:24:51Sen. Peters: 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 combined have committed billions of dollars worth of fraud. Pardoned by president trump.
▶ 0:25:23Sen. Peters: These pardons wiped out and estimated $1.3 billion in restitution and have frequently gone to wealthy and well-connected individuals. It sends a signal you have money or the president's favor, you can commit fraud without consequence.
▶ 0:25:39Sen. Peters: Finally, if we are going to 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 the americans who offer taxpayer dollars. Since taking office in 2025, president trump and his family have made an estimated $2 billion from cryptocurrency alone.
▶ 0:26:04Sen. Peters: If this committee is serious about tackling fraud, I hope we can 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 frau.
▶ 0:26:21Sen. Peters: We to restore the strong and independent watchdog to have a track record of fighting fraud and getting money back for the american people rather than amplifying sensationalized social media that takes a more focused on getting views than actually getting the truth. Mr. chairman, we share the goal of saving taxpayer dollars and making our government more efficient.
▶ 0:26:46Sen. Peters: When you are 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, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:26:57Chair Paul: 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 get before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? Thank you. You may be seated. Our first witness will be nick shirley.
▶ 0:27:24Chair Paul: He is an independent journalist known for his on the ground investigations which he publishes on his social media pages and the antifraud club website. Mr. shirley.
▶ 0:27:33Mr. Shirley: My name is nick shirley. I am a one hundred percent independent journalist who seeks each day to serve we the people of the united states with a mission to show 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 its very own citizens. Unfortunately today, america's good faith has been abused by others, often foreigners who seek to harm, rob, and she america.
▶ 0:28:00Mr. Shirley: Through my efforts, I have exposed billions of dollars of fraud and help save america hundred billions for years to come. When we talk about fraud, we are talking about money that is being stolen from hard-working, 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 summer, I published a 43 minute long video exposing widespread fraud in minnesota.
▶ 0:28:31Mr. Shirley: That video became one of the most viewed videos in internet history and gained billions of use across seven days and across all forms of media. The fraud was so obvious that the fraudsters were not trying to hide it. The video has become one of the most consequent of videos in american history. Legislation has been created since posting it. Over 30 bills have been created and introduced in congress regarding fraud. A new fraud task force has been created.
▶ 0:29:01Mr. Shirley: And treasury is working on new systems to stop fraud at unprecedented levels. I hope to ignite a war on fraud across the country. People often wonder, how come this fraud became so big and how come it became so rampant? The reason is because no one actually looked into it. When elon musk offered to help by creating doge, people bring his factories, bob his cars, and a logician's the greater his company's stock going down. Elon was right when he said fraudsters complain the loudest.
▶ 0:29:30Mr. Shirley: By exposing the fraud, it also exposed the politicians and media who worked for years to gov go cover it up. Tim walz called me a far right delusional conspiracy theorist. Meanwhile, he dropped out of reelection and ended his political career. There has been someone that played for fraud. Where is tim walz in the media now?
▶ 0:29:59Mr. Shirley: Over 80% of the fraud committed in minnesota is by the somali population. After minnesota, I exposed widespread fraud in california in the hospice community were in a possible one third of americans and hospice care were set to die in los angeles. The next day, the governor gavin newsom posted an ai generated image of myself trying to mock and discredit my work. Only days later, he and his attorney general both try to take credit for exposing the fraud.
▶ 0:30:25Mr. Shirley: Now the attorney general's wife created a bill that would make it criminal to expose fraud. The act, a 2624, will help fraudsters cover up crimes and prevent themselves from being exposed, specifically in immigrant communities. Politicians often use immigrant communities to commit fraud. Why would they allow this to happen?
▶ 0:30:49Mr. Shirley: In california, their medicaid program has now or than doubled from $108 billion in 2022 to a proposed $222 billion while enrollment has only rose by less than 1%. The system is filled with bad actors and fraudsters. In new york city, government-funded adult day care is pay for elderly koreans and chinese to play ping-pong and do tai chi at the taxpayers's expense.
▶ 0:31:19Mr. Shirley: An impossible number of patients are registered, and those patients received kickbacks for attending and signing up their friends. Over $2 billion have gone to these fraudsters at the taxpayers's expense. I am just one person doing the work of many people. If the government and media is not going to do their job to help america come it is the possibility 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.
▶ 0:31:47Mr. Shirley: I am doing it with the help of everyday americans that government paid officials are supposed to do in the media teams across the country have millions of dollars to do this, yet they do not look into this fraud. They have actually quite literally failed as. 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 can go to all 50 states and uncover millions of dollars in tax dollars being defrauded, wasted, and abused.
▶ 0:32:17Mr. Shirley: It is my wish while sitting in front of you guys today to help you take action by cracking down on all the fraud and too simple he put americans first. Thank you.
▶ 0:32:28Chair Paul: Our next witness this james o'keefe. He is an american investigative journalist and media entrepreneur, founder of project veritas, and currently serves as the founder and ceo of o'keefe media group. Mr. o'keefe.
▶ 0:32:43Mr. O'Keefe: Chairman paul, ranking member peters, and members of this to many, thank you for the opportunity to testify. In february of 2026, I disguised myself as a homeless person and approached a partition circulator on skid road near san pedro and 6th street in downtown l.a.. I saw cash clipped to his shirt, which I thought was odd. I was told we would need 14 signatures and will pay you two dollars.
▶ 0:33:11Mr. O'Keefe: One of our reporters asked what is going on here? They replied with one word, money. Handing over cash as payment in exchange for a home is person to register to vote in a federal election. That is a federal crime. Congress expressly criminalizes payments to people to register to vote. Why? Because the vote is sacred. It is an act of conscience, judgment.
▶ 0:33:36Mr. O'Keefe: When it becomes contaminated, is for sale, it undermines the process elected to represent us. With the U.S. attorney saying, once I saw these videos, I went to work. Brown described the whole thing as a "pyramid game." and then came the ironing. In the neighborhood of ngo's in los angeles designed to protect the vulnerable homeless population, the person being confronted by the ngo's was not the fraudster.
▶ 0:34:06Mr. O'Keefe: It was the reporter exposing the fraud. Minutes after we exposed these felonies, I was approached by a man who identified himself being with the lapd. When I pressed him he admitted he was actually with the l.a. Homelessness authority. Under california law, that was a crime. That was also a form of fraud covering the fraud across the street. It got worse. We witnessed partition took leaders giving out marijuana in exchange for a petition signatures.
▶ 0:34:34Mr. O'Keefe: When they spotted our camera, they told one of the reporters, I will knock you, I will beat you. He threatened us so we decided to band together. We formed a justice league. Over the next few weeks, we caught dozens of these cash and drug exchanges for signatures on petitions.
▶ 0:34:53Mr. O'Keefe: 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 important and the activity should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We also found bella petitioner's asking homeless people to sign in other people's names. We recorded over the shoulder one petitioner who took out his phone to access an online database to pull voter rolls and addresses. "I have an idaho address." the petitioner says, I'm going to give you an address to write.
▶ 0:35:24Mr. O'Keefe: Your name is robert. Another says, I am giving you a new name. So we visited the residences of those people who are disenfranchised. One was vicki walker. The homeowner at that address set for nine years he received election mail in the name of vicki walker. He told me he received so many ballots in the name of vicki walker, he named his cat vicki walker. We returned to us for comment from the petitioner offering drugs in exchange for signatures, the same individual that threatened us earlier.
▶ 0:35:54Mr. O'Keefe: He grabbed the petitions and hid them in his car. When we cut up to him, one of his associates charged at us and punched my producer in the neck. The two men then charged at me. Right before they struck us, pepper spray was deployed. With pepper spray in their eyes, the two men continued to attempt to assail us. My colleague and I had no choice but to run for our lives. To this day, all the fraudsters that committed state crimes roam free.
▶ 0:36:21Mr. O'Keefe: This as nick has said is not a political issue. It is not a partisan issue. It is not a conspiracy theory, and it is most certainly not circumstantial evidence. Everything I testify to you here, all the quotes and more, are all recorded on tape. So the question before this committee is not whether the fraud exists or whether it is happening. Oftentimes in politics you all debate the facts. Facts are what they are. The question is why the incentives allow it to flourish. There is money in fraud.
▶ 0:36:52Mr. O'Keefe: But there is no money in exposing fraud. And when laws are ignored without consequences, fraud becomes the incentive. Fraud becomes the model of life. Tony moore told us if there is no consequent is, it does not matter, and that is the point. I don't have subpoena power. Us journalist don't have the power to do anything but expose.
▶ 0:37:17Mr. O'Keefe: They campaign in this building about freedom and protecting democracy and how nobody is above the law, but those principles are not enforced when they are violated in broad daylight. They are not principles at all. They are slogans. Without accountability, our notion of freedom is just an illusion. Thank you.
▶ 0:37:39Chair Paul: Senator peters will introduce our third witness.
▶ 0:37:43Sen. Peters: Mr. dylan hedtler-gaudette is the acting vice president of policy and government affairs at the project on government oversight commonly known as pogo. Mr. hedtler-gaudette is a nationally recognized expert in a range of issues including government ethics, anticorruption policy, separation of powers, the rule of law, and government operations integrity and effectiveness.
▶ 0:38:10Sen. Peters: He has testified before congress on eight separate occasions on a variety of topics including providing waste and fraud, defense spending accountability, judicial ethics, and undue foreign influence. Mr. hedtler-gaudette 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 we appreciate your testimony.
▶ 0:38:40Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Chairman paul, ranking never peters, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is dylan hedtler-gaudette, and I have the acting buys president policy and government affairs. We are a nonpartisan independent watchdog organization with 45 years of experience in promoting account ability, transparency, and effectiveness in the federal government. If you would not mind, I would like to start with some data to paint a bit of a picture for us.
▶ 0:39:11Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: We currently spend about $7 trillion a year in terms of our federal budget. In fiscal year 2025, we read a $1.8 trillion federal budget deficit. We currently carry a federal debt load of about $40 trillion. Payments -- I'm sorry interest payments on that debt are the third-largest annual expert to remake each year.
▶ 0:39:33Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: The fourth-largest of which comes at a cool $1 trillion and a president trump has his way, that number will balloon to a staggering one point $5 trillion this year. Why do I start with this big picture data? It is important to realize that vast sums of taxpayer dollars are at stake when we talk about issues of waste, fraud, and abuse.
▶ 0:39:55Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: It is equally important to remember the federal government has an equally vast responsibility and 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 response ability.
▶ 0:40:14Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Recently, the government accountable in the office issued a report in which it estimated that in fiscal year 2025 the federal government issued 180 $6 billion in improper payments, bringing the total of improper payments issued in fiscal year 2023 to $3 trillion or thereabouts. Gao also estimated that in 2024 alone, we lost somewhere between 230 and 500 $20 billion to fraud.
▶ 0:40:40Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: 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 able to say $100 billion a year. Now, what does this data tell us? It 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.
▶ 0:41:07Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: And the only way to get there is to promote actionable, common sense, pragmatic reforms, and it is those exact kinds of reforms I am here to talk about today. First, we must look to internal watchdogs and oversight practitioners such as the inspector general, the ability office, the office of special counsel, and others, and we must strengthen, empower, and fully resource them to perform the essential functions at the taxpayers -- as the taxpayers's eyes and years from within the
▶ 0:41:37Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Federal government. Second, we must also provide safe and secure reporting and disclosure channels for whistleblowers. Courageous individuals from within the government often blow the whistle and exposed some of the worst waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, and malfeasance, and are often altered too common on the receiving end of retaliation for doing so. It is imperative that congress create the safe and secure his culture channels while strengthening protections for retaliation for federal whistleblowers.
▶ 0:42:06Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Lastly, the technical architecture the federal government currently uses to monitor, track, analyze, and assess federal funding is woefully inaccurate. Key databases and resources are in desperate need of overhaul and modernization. Conga should start by dramatically expanding the quality and quantity of the data and information collected up and down the spending chain.
▶ 0:42:30Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: 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 agents's 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 we must do something about them.
▶ 0:42:55Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: The only way we are going to solve them is by some of the reforms and others I have laid out here today, but we are not going to solve them by focusing on sensationalistic anecdotes, clout chasing internet viral videos, or provocative pseudo-documentaries. We will also not solve the problem by demonizing and scapegoating specific amenities 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.
▶ 0:43:23Chair Paul: We will begin a round of questions. I will defer my time to senator johnson.
▶ 0:43:27Sen. Johnson: So we had in testimony and opening statements a couple of jabs I guess at nick shirley's videos. The only reason we are taking fraud seriously is because of that kind of journalism in front of us. The fact that he exposed in all its gory detail how grotesque and how blatant this fraud is, how rampant it is. So, Mr.
▶ 0:43:53Sen. Johnson: Hedtler-gaudette, I agree with most of your prescriptions here. Chairman of the committee, we had to testify and supportive of the inspector generals. We had to have a couple inspector generals resigning, the posse. The problem I have with the prescriptions is it has not worked. The lowest estimate I hear fraud in the federal government is 250 boland -- $250 billion a year.
▶ 0:44:24Sen. Johnson: You said $230 billion. Nexis lexis said it is $1 trillion. It was not really until this administration with doge, that effort has also been denigrated here, that we started going in and doing something about it. Now we have Dr. oz going in, again partly because of nick shirley's revelation that a third of the hospice centers in america were in los angeles county.
▶ 0:44:51Sen. Johnson: So the way we prevented the fraud is we stopped funding for hundred of them, and not one of those hospice centers complained. So it is the tip of the iceberg. Mr. shirley, I commend you on your phenomenal journalism. When I saw that happen, I go, why did I not think of that? Why didn't my staff do those videos? Journalism is crucial to this. You are a partner in what we need to do.
▶ 0:45:18Sen. Johnson: And it is only because of those videos that expose that we have any chance of trying to rein in this beast. You mentioned the stop nick shirley act. What is that? Can you describe that in greater detail?
▶ 0:45:33Mr. Shirley: Yeah, so that is a bill created by the wife of the attorney general of california. The official title is ab it is2624. 2624. It is to make it illegal to expose and from outside of immigration support service providers. That means any entity that provides services to illegal migrants, whether that be health-care or legal fees.
▶ 0:46:00Mr. Shirley: If I were to go out and film a video in front of one of these locations, perhaps an ngo that has received over $80 million from the government, and they give me a piece of paper and say, hey, you cannot publish that video. If that bill passes, it will be illegal for me to document that.
▶ 0:46:17Sen. Johnson: It really ought to be named protect the medicaid fraudster act. Would probably be a better description of that, correct?
▶ 0:46:25Mr. Shirley: Correct.
▶ 0:46:26Sen. Johnson: Why do you think you have such pushback from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle? Just a denigration here from the ranking member, governor newsom. Why is that? You would think trying to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse would be a completely nonpartisan issue?
▶ 0:46:45Mr. Shirley: Because quite frankly they need the fraud. They actually need the fraud.
▶ 0:46:50Sen. Johnson: Mr. o'keefe, I have a lot more questions, but I am not understanding. What were these petitions about? You really have -- they were paying money for signatures on petitions. Generally pushed forward by nongovernmental organizations, which by the way we do not track how much money is expended. 7.5 trillion dollars of expenditure, we don't know how much funnels through ngo's.
▶ 0:47:17Sen. Johnson: So you have paying dollars for signing petitions and also paying dollars for voter registration. Have you followed that through? What is that about?
▶ 0:47:26Mr. O'Keefe: Yes, senator. One, it is a california state crime to fraudulently sign into but he name to get nothing on the california ballot initiative, and the other is a federal crime with federal jurisdiction where you pay someone in order to get them to register to vote.
▶ 0:47:41Sen. Johnson: These are petitions to get a referendum on the ballot of california.
▶ 0:47:44Mr. O'Keefe: That is correct.
▶ 0:47:45Sen. Johnson: What did not make sense to me about the registrations, they were signing up fake names or fake addresses. If you are going to commit election fraud, you sign up legitimate names, legitimate addresses so you can basically harvest those ballots and vote for who you wanted to vote. Have you followed that?
▶ 0:48:03Mr. O'Keefe: Yes. In one instance, we looked over a shoulder and a petitioner log into a website and accessed currently registered voters using their real names and real addresses. We were unable to determine or ascertain what this website is, but we believe your committee has subpoena power to try to find out what that is.
▶ 0:48:24Sen. Johnson: That would be my offer. Both chairman paul and myself have subpoena power. If you need it, we are more than happy to use it. I make that offer to both Mr. shirley and to you, Mr. o'keefe.
▶ 0:48:36Mr. O'Keefe: We will follow up with you.
▶ 0:48:38Sen. Johnson: Thank you.
▶ 0:48:40Chair Paul: Senator peters.
▶ 0:48:42Sen. Peters: Mr. hedtler-gaudette, as you know, president trump fired 19 inspectors general, the independent watchdogs tasked by congress to fight waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs. On may 21, 2025, I can a report that revealed in fiscal year 24 alone, those firedig's had collectively identified $50 billion of government savings through their work.
▶ 0:49:14Sen. Peters: Since then, president trump has fired additional ig's and cut funding and staff to the oversight agencies, some by more than one third. So my question for you, sir, is, do partisan attacks on independent oversight benefit fraudsters?
▶ 0:49:29Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Yes, I would say they absently benefit fraudsters. They politicize the entire endeavor of going after the waste, fraud, and abuse, which is literally the mission statement and reason for existence for watchdogs like inspector generals.
▶ 0:49:44Sen. Peters: How can congress defend the programs in your estimation?
▶ 0:49:49Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Sure. I touched on this a little bit in my opening statement and in more detail in my written statement, but there are a number of pre-existing entities such as inspector generals, such as the government account ability office. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to strengthen, empower, and protect those and give them the resources they need to conduct their important work of oversight.
▶ 0:50:11Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Most importantly, we need to provide more political insulation and independent, whether they can do that work without fear or favor, without being meddled with. Because that is the anathema to any oversight.
▶ 0:50:26Sen. Peters: Mr. hedtler-gaudette, pogo has raised concerns about both president biden and president trump's use of presidential pardons. This administration has claimed to care about fraud, and yet president trump has pardoned a staggering number of convicted fraudsters. To date, he has pardoned over two dozen criminals who committed a combined nearly $3 billion in financial crimes and fraud.
▶ 0:50:56Sen. Peters: These pardons also robbed victims of approximately $1.3 billion in restitution payments. They were given to people like lawrence durand, who committed $205 million in medicare fraud, and trevor belton, who committed $680 million in securities fraud. Mr. milton and his wife not surprisingly donated $2.5 million to the presidential campaign.
▶ 0:51:24Sen. Peters: So my cushion for you, sir, is, how would you describe pardoning criminal fraudster campaign donors as an effort to combat fraud?
▶ 0:51:32Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I would describe it as a completely nonsensical approach to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. Again, it undermines any claims to human eight waste, fraud, and abuse to pardon fraudsters.
▶ 0:51:47Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: In the case of one florida woman, a multiple convicted fraudster who got a competition in his first term and a full pardon in his second term so that does not seem to be an action of an entity that cares about fraud, perhaps fraud when perpetrated by the right people or the wrong people.
▶ 0:52:08Sen. Peters: What do you think unger should do to rein in the misuse of presidential pardon power?
▶ 0:52:10Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: This is a tricky one. The pardon power is of course a constitutionally prescribed. It is pretty stark. I have a personal hobbyhorse view that a constitutional commitment to remove the pardon powers should probably be considered because it is the legacy of a monarchical view of the head of state, which is kind of the whole thing we are supposed to be against here in the united states. We don't like kings and the pardon power is a divine right of kings sort of concept.
▶ 0:52:38Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Barring that, I think there are some common sense constitutionally viable approaches to transparency, consultation, reporting disclosure, and the process within the doj's pardon office.
▶ 0:52:52Sen. Peters: Thank you. I have been proud to enact bipartisan legislation to approve government data analytics, enhance oversight capabilities, and prevent payments to dead people. However, challenges remain, especially as fraudsters become more sophisticated and government systems have quite frankly not kept pace. It is estimated $186 billion of improper payments were made. So my question for you, Mr.
▶ 0:53:21Sen. Peters: Hedtler-gaudette, is, what practical solutions should congress prioritize to prevent improper payments and stop fraudulent behavior while still protecting critical programs that americans rely on every day?
▶ 0:53:33Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Thank you. Verification is important. I believe chairman paul referred to this in his opening statement. We do not do enough of that. But also, into an transparency, reporting, and disclosure along every step of the spending and funding chain. We also don't do much of that.
▶ 0:53:54Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I don't need to tell you this encompass, but it is you all doing your thing with the money, it goes to federal agencies, federal agencies award it out to prime recipients, but the prime recipient 10 to award it out to sub recipients. That is where we lose any meaningful insight into where the money is going, who is ending up with it, the impact it is having.
▶ 0:54:17Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: If there is one sort of key close to a silver bullet, I would recommend getting our hands around reporting and transparency all the way up and down the chain from end to end.
▶ 0:54:25Sen. Peters: Thank you.
▶ 0:54:26Chair Paul: I think that hits on the point, is the payments are coming from the federal government but the people signing them up are not connected to the payment. So they are in the states. They are local. They want to help people. Let's help more people. They add people to it but are not paying for it. You have to have the same people paying for it that are signing the people at. To tuntil you connect those two people, you will have the same problem. Senator lankford.
▶ 0:54:51Sen. Langford: Thank you for the work that you do to identify fraud and waste. It is really about sunshine and trying to expose this out. For nine years, I have been releasing where we just outline areas that we see on waste and abuse and loss of federal dollars, overregulation, and we throw those out there. What has been interesting as we have seen the same things you have when we identify the areas of waste.
▶ 0:55:20Sen. Langford: People shrink back away from it and say we will try to be able to deal with this. It is the sunshine that really does make a difference. What you are doing is bringing things to light on this. We have identified things like in 2023 the state department was funding drag shows in ecuador. The nea was doing a social media game to increase physical activity in older women in creating a social media activity which they sit there for that.
▶ 0:55:47Sen. Langford: There was an nea production that created a fat pig, which was telling the story of a plus size woman who falls in love with a man who has "a normal body." we also did an nih study 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.
▶ 0:56:11Sen. Langford: There is multiples that are out there.the biden administration did a $250 million study in nih to study how to transition mice and monkeys insects and how to 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. I want to run several questions past you and have several big issues.
▶ 0:56:41Sen. Langford: How are you identifying initially what you are actually finding? What is the tip you are saying I think there may be fraud there? How are you identifying it?
▶ 0:56:49Mr. Shirley: A lot of times I go through these databases and look for the largest amount of funding and also looking for anomalies that come. For instance, in new york city at these adult daycare care is, there were 7,899 patients in an adult day care and they received $12.9 million. I go to the daycare and there is only one floor. It would be quite frankly impossible to enroll that many patients into that daycare.
▶ 0:57:14Sen. Lankford: Yeah, so it is just going through the available public data on it.
▶ 0:57:18Mr. Shirley: Yes, and also relying on americans breed I learned about the minnesota fraud from the minnesotans. They sent, you are finally here to make a video. For the past six month, I look for the information about the fraud.
▶ 0:57:35Sen. Lankford: That is good. That is very helpful on this. Mr. hedtler-gaudette, I have a follow-up question on this. I am a big advocate for gao and inspector general. You and I talked about that before. They are incredibly important to us. They are the investigators congress has hired basically to be able to put in these different agencies and do oversight. The problem is they have the same access to data that Mr. shirley has.
▶ 0:58:01Sen. Lankford: When we get reports back from them, they are generally very times and there are no specifics and we are not able to highlight this information. The problem is not gao and the inspector general. It is getting the data and information from them. They could have done the same thing that Mr. 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 is out there?
▶ 0:58:26Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Thank you, senator lankford. If I might for one moment, I want to extend my appreciation to you for your work for years starting in the house on the act that created for the first time a federal program inventory, which seemed kind of counterintuitive. That such a thing did not exist for a long time, but thank you for your work on that bill. It now does exist.
▶ 0:58:50Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I commend you for your long-standing commitment to transparency and oversight when it comes to federal programs.
▶ 0:58:57Sen. Lankford: Appreciate that.
▶ 0:58:58Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: In response to your question, I agree with you that sometimes gaa reports -- I love a good gao report, but they are often at a higher level of abstraction. They are still extremely valuable I think, but sometimes gao can get a little bit tentative if it gets too specific.
▶ 0:59:17Sen. Lankford: I described them as safe. They are trying to write a safe report on a bad issue of fraud. I don't mean safe. I need raw information. That is what Mr. shirley is bringing.
▶ 0:59:31Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I would be happy to see that too. Creating more independence for the gao would help that problem because they would feel less insecure and less scared of potentially upsetting some particular constituency who may in fact have control over their budget. Part of this is you really want watchdogs to be as much as possible within the bounds of constitutional allow ability, as independent as possible.
▶ 0:59:54Sen. Lankford: That is helpful. Mr. o'keefe, I will just mckay, to you. Thank you for the work you are doing on trying to expose issues with election security. In all,, we work hard on verifying with voter id. You have to have a notary to verify that is actually you if you are mailing in a ballot. We take steps to secure the election. I wish that was so in every state. It is incredibly important for the trust we have. I appreciate the work you are doing.
▶ 1:00:23Mr. O'Keefe: Thank you.
▶ 1:00:25Chair Paul: Senator scott. >> chairman, wouldn't a democrat don't?
▶ 1:00:31Chair Paul: If there were a democrat here, yes. >> so there are no democrats present on a hearing about fraud.
▶ 1:00:37Chair Paul: There does not seem to be a great deal of interest across the aisle. Senator scott.
▶ 1:00:42Sen. Scott: Thank you, senator moreno. It is hard to believe. First off, thank you for caring about election security. Mr. o'keefe, your team returned to skidrow after something was indicted for election fraud and found the same operation running openly. Cash for signatures, fake voter data, and coached forgery. Walk us through the document and whether the indictment deterred anybody.
▶ 1:01:14Sen. Scott: Based on your investigation, do you think this model could easily be replicated in other states and cities around the country?
▶ 1:01:19Mr. O'Keefe: Thank you, senator. Yeah, within seconds of appearing on skidrow my personally disguised as a homeless person caught this behavior happening in broad daylight. It is happening thousands of times. I wanted to mention the names of these organizations, these petitioners gather names. Urban signers is one. One more petition is another. Brenda brown was indicted by the department of justice.
▶ 1:01:44Mr. O'Keefe: The question remains, who is on the top orchestrating all of this? That is something we intend to find out. I will be submitting to senator ron johnson a request for a subpoena to gather more information about that. Also, these people are logging into an online database called sigvalid.com and pulling real names and voters. Those people's votes are disenfranchised. We went to the homes and knocked on the door of them.
▶ 1:02:13Mr. O'Keefe: One of them said, what if I wanted to vote in this election? This is a completely nonpartisan, non-political issue. Karen bass did not criticize me. They actually put statements out saying this is outrageous and needs to be exposed.
▶ 1:02:27Sen. Scott: So, what has happened?
▶ 1:02:29Mr. O'Keefe: The department of justice has indicted, but nobody in the state of california has yet arrested or prosecuted these people.
▶ 1:02:38Sen. Scott: What has gavin newsom done?
▶ 1:02:40Mr. O'Keefe: Put out a statement condemning the stuff we exposed in the tape. That is it.
▶ 1:02:45Sen. Scott: Does he have invested efficient authority?
▶ 1:02:47Mr. O'Keefe: He does in the state of california.
▶ 1:02:50Sen. Scott: Karen bass?
▶ 1:02:51Mr. O'Keefe: She has.
▶ 1:02:52Sen. Scott: Is it against the law?
▶ 1:02:55Mr. O'Keefe: It is a crime.
▶ 1:02:59Sen. Scott: So in california they are not going to prosecute this. If it was not for the federal government, nothing would happen.
▶ 1:03:07Mr. O'Keefe: I'm sorry?
▶ 1:03:08Sen. Scott: If it was not for the federal government, nothing would happen.
▶ 1:03:12Mr. O'Keefe: We have to put tremendous sure and find a way to incentivize these elective elected officials to do the right thing.
▶ 1:03:21Sen. Scott: Have they impacted ballot initiatives in california with ballot signatures?
▶ 1:03:26Mr. O'Keefe: Yes, the signatures are regarding california state elections.
▶ 1:03:30Sen. Scott: These ngo's, can you find out where they are getting the money? Federal money, county money?
▶ 1:03:36Mr. O'Keefe: Yes, we did covertly interview some of the ngos across the street. Weingart is one. They received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. These ngo's are located literally across the street from the fraud that is happening. I testified that one man who represented himself as an ngo pretended to be a police officer to intimidate my news organization from reporting on this abuse. That is also a state crime.
▶ 1:04:05Mr. O'Keefe: So the ngo's see it happening at our story actually encouraged it. They said, here is where you can do the cash for ballots. And those ngo's receive millions of dollars of federal funding.
▶ 1:04:18Sen. Scott: So, where are they -- what are they getting the money for? Under what premise do they get money?
▶ 1:04:24Mr. O'Keefe: It is the california homeless industrial complex. They are there to help protect and advance the mission of supporting the homeless population but ever reporting showed the homeless here are actually the victims. We interviewed a lot of the homeless, and they were testifying to meet that they were being taken advantage of. All it takes is a few cigarettes, some marijuana, a few dollars, which does not sound like a lot to you and I but it helps them by a cheeseburger. They are the victims. That is what they told us.
▶ 1:04:55Sen. Scott: Did you follow the spencer pratt race?
▶ 1:04:57Mr. O'Keefe: I did.
▶ 1:04:59Sen. Scott: Were you surprised he went from being the runner up to being out of the race?
▶ 1:05:03Mr. O'Keefe: I was -- all I can do, all I can think about is tracing who is behind this fraud at the top. That is my interest, and that is my priority. Because all the stuff you see out there is also evidence. But -- is all circumstantial evidence, but we caught the cast exchange on camera and it led to an indictment so I want to know who is orchestrating it at the top, and I intend to find out.
▶ 1:05:31Sen. Scott: Do you think the U.S. attorney will go after the ngo?
▶ 1:05:35Mr. O'Keefe: He did what he told me he said he was going to do, but we need non-circumstantial evidence. We need direct cash payments on tape, incontrovertible evidence for the department of justice to do their job. I feel like that is my role. I feel like citizen journalists don't have to deal with bureaucracy. Just go in there and get the story within a day, and that is what we intend to do.
▶ 1:05:57Sen. Scott: Thanks for what you do.
▶ 1:05:59Chair Paul: Senator moreno.
▶ 1:06:01Sen. Moreno: Thank you, Mr. chairman, for holding this hearing. Let me point out again for the record that I think preventing fraud in government should be completely nonpartisan. It is not a democrat issue or a republican issue yet almost the entirety of the republican dais is filled with people sitting here listening to the entire hearing, and literally the entire democrat dais is empty. I think that is quite prickly a disgrace.
▶ 1:06:30Sen. Moreno: I think it is a disgrace to the people who pay taxes to know there is an entire party that does not care whether taxpayer money is burned. I think it is absolutely completely outrageous. Mr. shirley, let's start with you. The previous comptroller general of the gao had been in office since 2011. What were you doing in 2011?
▶ 1:06:54Mr. Shirley: Playing football and basketball.
▶ 1:06:58Sen. Moreno: What grade were you in?
▶ 1:07:03Mr. Shirley: At that time, I was nine years old.
▶ 1:07:08Sen. Moreno: You were nine years old and this person had been in government for 15 years. We have this idea that it somehow would be better off and yet you went in at your risk and exposed fraud. I'm going to take a different angle. How does it make you feel as someone who is 25 years old to know that your generation is going to pay the bill for everything that has happened right now? We are $40 trillion in debt.
▶ 1:07:37Sen. Moreno: Yet your generation is going to pay the price.
▶ 1:07:40Mr. Shirley: Yeah, I think that is the sad thing. My generation is the one affected the most from this fraud and the national debt. It is extremely hard for anyone my age to buy a home, even be able to accumulate the money to have a down payment and a bank account. So when you see a fraudster who literally opens up a center and they receive one point and billion dollars and that was going on for years and no one did anything but all of this oversight, we had -- everyone knew about the fight but everyone was too afraid to talk about the fraud because of what happened to them.
▶ 1:08:11Sen. Moreno: What do you mean what would happen to them? Is it impolite to say that somebody is defrauding the government because there is some certain race or gender or national origin? Is that somehow racist to say you should not steal money from the federal government?
▶ 1:08:28Mr. Shirley: It is not racist, but politically, it can be seen as racist. They may label it as islamophobia or racist, prickly.
▶ 1:08:39Sen. Moreno: I think profiles in courage would be something that would be written not about the current numbers of the democratic party for sure because you agree they are just afraid of being labeled that way and that fear drives them away from being able to attend a hearing like today?
▶ 1:08:54Mr. Shirley: Yeah, and evidently. It is very sad to see that -- yeah, definitely. It is very sad to see that they don't want to be labeled as racist or islamophobia for exposing fraud, for exposing what is happening in a community. They use that to commit to five. Had omar should be disgraced what she did to the somali population.
▶ 1:09:16Sen. Moreno: When you look at people of your generation cannot afford a car, cannot afford a house, cannot see a future where you can retire with any dignity and yet some can break into our country illegally, be provided at hotel room in new york, three meals a day, maid service want to become a free education, free health care, what goes through your head when you think about that?
▶ 1:09:36Mr. Shirley: How does this happen? We are putting foreigners oftentimes above american citizens. It is very sad to see.
▶ 1:09:43Sen. Moreno: Mr. hedtler-gaudette, I want to drill back down to the numbers you provided because I want to make sure I heard them correctly. You talked about -- again, we are here to talk about fraud. We can talk about waste in a different hearing. You mentioned 2025. What was the number? You the number off the top of your head. Impressive.
▶ 1:10:03Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: Gao estimated we should $186 billion in improper payments.
▶ 1:10:08Sen. Moreno: $186 billion in 2025. From 2017 to 2020, president trump's first term, that number by gao was $672 billion. Does that sound right?
▶ 1:10:21Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I don't have that off the top of my head but sounds right.
▶ 1:10:24Sen. Moreno: Gao citing their numbers. From 2022 2024, that number under bite and was $900 billion.
▶ 1:10:33Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I would point out 2020 is still under the trump administration.
▶ 1:10:39Sen. Moreno: No, this is fiscal year. So it was a 38% increase and it was massively cut back by president trump in his second term. I don't know that that is the greatest case to be made that the entire issue is because we have these inspector generals that failed dramatically since the time nick shirley was playing basketball in his driveway when he was nine years old. I think what we need to do here Mr. chairman's take this topic very seriously. I think the american people are sick and tired of hearing this.
▶ 1:11:08Sen. Moreno: They need to see people who are held accountable, that go to jail, and until we do that, I don't know that we have confidence. I feel badly for nick's generation honestly. I don't know how they look at it and say this government is failing us. The sense of disenfranchisement with the american government. I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that democrats care so little about this topic that they did not even show up.
▶ 1:11:33Sen. Moreno: They did not show up at your session either, senator johnson, when we talked about this exact topic and your committee. Ultimately, if you elected leaders don't give a crap about how government spends money, is an indictment on that. Even worse, the media won't talk about it. There will be more stories on cnn tonight about the reflecting pond being empty than the fact that you had a hearing today about trillions of dollars of fraud. That is the problem. The media is complicit.
▶ 1:12:05Sen. Moreno: The democrats are complicit. That is ultimately you have to think what keeps them in power. With that, thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:12:12Chair Paul: Senator ernst.
▶ 1:12:13Sen. Ernst: Yes, thank you, Mr. chairman, for holding this important hearing him and I want to thank our witnesses for being here today as well because a lot of you are deciding to go face-to-face with a lot of the fraudsters that are ripping off our taxpayers. And you are exposing the corruption that the typical mainstream media and our federal government and state governments have been ignoring and in some cases actually enabling.
▶ 1:12:44Sen. Ernst: So I have learned the hard way through many years of working on fraud, waste, and abuse than the federal government that this type of work does not earn you a lot of friends. So because of the work that all of you are doing, I just want to say thank you so much on behalf of all of my iowans and all of our taxpayers across the country. Americans are sending their tax dollars to washington. They deserve to know how those taxpayer dollars are being spent.
▶ 1:13:15Sen. Ernst: And they need to know that the money they worked really hard for is being safeguarded and responsibly spent. I found this really shocking in a lot of the work that I have done that every single day, every single day we are losing as a federal government $1.4 billion to fraud. That is not a week. That is not a month. That is every single day, $1.4 billion. That is just fraud.
▶ 1:13:43Sen. Ernst: That does not include all of the waste and abuse we have within the federal government. It is a lot of money that has gone missing without anybody noticing or in some cases even caring. I have always said it, but if you cannot find waste, fraud, or abuse in washington, it instantly because you are not looking. You are not looking. So our witnesses have taken a hard look at this issue. I appreciate it.
▶ 1:14:10Sen. Ernst: You have given americans an opportunity to see what is happening with their own eyes. And because of that, the content has gone viral. So, nick, we all know this. We have all seen this. So for the folks that are out there watching, youtube journalist nick shirley's visit to the quality learing center helped us learn how easy it is to get away with fraud in minnesota.
▶ 1:14:42Sen. Ernst: Center was given $10 million of taxpayer money to provide childcare, yet Mr. shirley yet Mr. shirley's footage showed there were not even any children present. Despite what we were able to see, minnesota officials insisted that the leering center and other questionable child centers exposed by nick shirley were "operating as expected." and, folks, that was exactly the problem. It is the graft that keeps on giving.
▶ 1:15:13Sen. Ernst: Mr. shirley, two whistleblowers who are career civil servants with the minnesota state government testified before a committee that I chair that they reported suspected fraud, including with these childcare centers years before you made it a national story.
▶ 1:15:37Sen. Ernst: And I want everyone to recognize this is not a democrat, witnesses is a democrat. She is a lifelong democrat and she was a whistleblower because why? Because some of the programs she was exposing for fraud her family had relied upon when she was a child.
▶ 1:15:58Sen. Ernst: And she recognized that the dollars that were committed to some of these programs with good intent were not going to the families that truly needed those taxpayer dollars. Those two whistleblowers, guess what happened? They were retaliated against. Because they rot the issue to light.
▶ 1:16:24Sen. Ernst: And, likewise, you were called a "delusional conspiracy theorist" by minnesota governor walz and accused of "grandstanding" by the state's attorney general. Similarly, when you expose hospice fraud in california governor newsom's office spend by tweeting "surely is the fraud ." Mr.
▶ 1:16:54Sen. Ernst: Shirley, why do you think politicians are trying to stop people like you who are exposing corruption rather than those who are actually committing the fraud?
▶ 1:17:05Mr. Shirley: A -- first off, it is said that governors would post that about somebody. All I have done is try to help america and I have done it. They aren't, that is why they are so angry about it, because they rely on the fraud to push their agendas inside their states.
▶ 1:17:23Mr. Shirley: That is why they get so mad when the fraud gets exposed because that money often times goes back into the hands of not necessarily the politicians, but what fuels those politicians to be able to do what they want to do inside their state.
▶ 1:17:36Sen. Ernst: It is a sad state of affairs, but what we see every day, washington is losing up to 520 $1 billion to fraud every year. The offices of inspector general have a combined yearly budget of nearly $4 billion.
▶ 1:17:54Sen. Ernst: Similarly, gao has an annual budget of more than 800 million dollars, and I shared that because they have hundreds of investigators and auditors at their disposal. Do you have billions of dollars at your disposal with your endless resources to enable you to uncover fraud?
▶ 1:18:14Mr. Shirley: No, not at all. In fact, I have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to say -- stay safe now.
▶ 1:18:22Sen. Ernst: Exactly. So, with very little resources you have been able to uncover fraud, and yet our federal government doesn't seem to be able to track it down. I know I am out of time. I have gone over. But it doesn't take millions and billions of dollars to expose fraud. You have to do a better job. I do have a bill, a package that I have proposed.
▶ 1:18:52Sen. Ernst: Senator thune has charged me with doing this. A number of people, including the chair, have anti-fraud bills that have been included in this anti-fraud package. We are hoping to be able to move it on the floor of the senate very soon, and it really is a common sense move to doing the right thing for our taxpayers. So, I really appreciate it. Senator paul, thank you so much, Mr. chair, for holding this hearing.
▶ 1:19:21Sen. Ernst: We need to take care of this issue. It is the right thing to do. Thank you. I yield back.
▶ 1:19:26Chair Paul: Senator moody.
▶ 1:19:29Sen. Moody: I think this is one of the most important hearings we have had since I have become --I'm one of the newest united states senators, which proves the least-senior people can actually move and be the loudest. This is one of the most important things we could be doing right now as a congress and it comes right to me, another republican, because there is not another democrat here to question any of you who represent a wide swath of the political spectrum, I imagine, on what is happening now in our country.
▶ 1:19:58Sen. Moody: I appreciate my colleague, senator ernst. We are going to miss her immensely in her fight against fraud and waste in this country. I am going to miss her immensely. As many of you know, she is retiring from the senate, but I think her putting up these tweets as a reminder and nick shirley, you spoke about this. I love that you are, by the way, 24 years old.
▶ 1:20:24Sen. Moody: You took something you started -- I want to say as young as 16 -- disrupting things and, man, does this bureaucracy and, I would say, cover-up need disrupting.
▶ 1:20:39Sen. Moody: Boy does it take somebody like you that is fine with that, because you are driven by passion for protecting your generation, because you are coming after all of us and will feel this immensely and the debt you inherit and I'm so grateful to you for showing up here and showing no matter your age, no matter where you are from, americans should demand their government is accountable to them and good stewards of their money, and boy am I impressed by you and I hope your family is as well.
▶ 1:21:07Sen. Moody: I'm so glad we have these, because I just want to point out. This is nothing I prepared for, but tim walz, governor of minnesota, do your member when he wanted to be our vice president and was bragging that these types of small businesses were reasons why he should be trusted with leading? And now we are determining what the small businesses like the learning center work. Use this as a reason he gave the american people why he should leave.
▶ 1:21:34Sen. Moody: So, why are we surprised that immediately he is defensive and comes after a young kid who is trying to point out on behalf of his generation where this money is really going and this fraud? Look at what the leader of california said. Did he really say in response to you uncovering just astronomical fraud and waste that -- and I want to quote this because I am appalled by it.
▶ 1:22:00Sen. Moody: Did he really say, slow surely is the fraud?
▶ 1:22:05Mr. Shirley: Yes, he did.
▶ 1:22:07Sen. Moody: I did not miss read that? It was not misprinted? So, somebody who wants to be the leader of the democratic party and show his great, I guess character, is demeaning you and calling you names and ridiculing you? Really?
▶ 1:22:27Mr. Shirley: Yes. That is gavin newsom.
▶ 1:22:31Sen. Moody: I would suggest that anyone can see what this is. This is -- oh my goodness, we just got caught. Let's throw out a bunch of blood in the water, go after other people, make sure people blame it on somebody else, but don't pay attention to us. What is that, like inc.?
▶ 1:22:49Mr. Shirley: Yes, and gavin newsom yesterday, he is giving one $1 million to a local journalist. They're going to get grants of 250 thousand dollars to do journalism. He is essentially paying for good press.
▶ 1:23:04Sen. Moody: I also have to commend Mr. johnson, who was saying in california instead of the stop nick shirley act they should call it take to fraudsters act. I mean, truly this should be a wake-up call to everyone in america that people that the democrats want to put in charge of their parties and in charge of their government, as soon as something is brought to their attention in a good-faith way
▶ 1:23:34Sen. Moody: Their responses not to say let's roll up our sleeves and dig in. Response is to say nothing to see here, the person they are bringing up is -- let me make sure I have this -- slow and they fraud himself. And let's propose legislation not only so we can keep covering it up, but that we can go after them.
▶ 1:23:56Mr. Shirley: Yes, and I wanted this to be on the record. Never once has a democrat politician never congratulated me or said thank you for exposing this or even reached out to say, hey, maybe come check out what is happening in our state. They are complicit in the fraud and that is why none of them are here today.
▶ 1:24:14Sen. Moody: May be complicit, trying to cover up something. Aiding and abetting.
▶ 1:24:19Mr. Shirley: 100%.
▶ 1:24:21Sen. Moody: Promoting their own political careers over taxpaying americans. I thank you. You know, there is an entire fraud economy. I think president trump and his administration is uncovering this. It is positive news that they are uncovering more and more of it, but it is sad that we are seeing so much of it.
▶ 1:24:45Sen. Moody: I come to washington I was like, we need to take a machete to all of the bureaucracy, all of the -- this has always been -- every time I bring up a problem the immigrant response is, we have always had fraud, have always had coercion of individuals. We have always had this but they never once say, let's do something about it. So, I would actually ask my colleagues. I have proposed in response to this, who want to do something about it if we want to be aggressive we need to start proposing solutions.
▶ 1:25:15Sen. Moody: I think my colleague, senator ernst, also proposed a stop childcare scams act, no aid for ghost students act. Punishing health care fraudsters act. This is just a few we are working on with my colleague, senator schmitt. We have launched a senate task force against fraud. I know they don't like to talk about fraud. They get really itchy when we talk about any kind of fraud, especially election fraud. Especially election fraud.
▶ 1:25:43Sen. Moody: And instead of saying, ok, let's explore what people are saying, or trying to discredit them or picking someone that knows nothing about it when they come into hearing and saying, the president trump win the election? The person would have no way of knowing and making them say that, instead of exploring fraud and doing something about it, I think we need to make sure that you don't just uncover -- we don't just address it, you don't just ask what we can do but we bolster the american people's trust in our elections.
▶ 1:26:15Sen. Moody: In the way we do that is to follow the florida blueprint. We used to be a national embarrassment. Getting ballot results after everybody went to sleep. In two decades we have turned that around. People trust florida elections. We can do that in this nation, which is why want to propose legislation that says ballots by election day. Ballots by election day. So people have faith in the results of their elections. Mr.
▶ 1:26:44Sen. Moody: O'keefe -- and I'm over time -- but is this something you think would bring better trust by americans in our elections if we could announce results by election day? Excluding military, of course?
▶ 1:26:55Mr. O'Keefe: Senator, I do. Citizenship verification answers whether a person is very from -- eligible, but not whether that is that person. Federal reforms should require identity to be verified before registration gets active. I think congress should look at that as well.
▶ 1:27:15Sen. Moody: Thank you and thank you for being here today, all of you.
▶ 1:27:18Chair Paul: Senator hawley.
▶ 1:27:20Sen. Hawley: Mr. shirley, I want to start with you. I want to say thank you for the terrific work you have done on exposing fraud all across the country. Nowhere more so than in the state of minnesota. Not long ago the attorney general of minnesota was sitting right where you are sitting. Keith ellison. I had a question or two for him about fraud in that state. He said, oh, nobody could have found it.
▶ 1:27:49Sen. Hawley: He didn't know anything about it. He was completely in the dark until it was all blown open and there is just nothing that would have tipped him off. I find that interesting, because near as I can tell you were a 24-year-old independent journalist, you had a camera and a list of public spending records, right? If this fraud was so hard to find how did you manage to find it when none of the public officials in minnesota could find it?
▶ 1:28:13Mr. Shirley: I simply went to the locations of the day cares and asked who enrolled a child and there was no way to enroll a child in any of these day cares. In fact there was no children we seen anywhere.
▶ 1:28:28Sen. Hawley: So, you asked a few questions and you look? You ask if there was fraud and you found it rampant?
▶ 1:28:35Mr. Shirley: Everywhere. And a lot of the medicaid programs inside of minnesota, from the [indiscernible] school vehicles, the transportation companies.
▶ 1:28:46Sen. Hawley: I find it interesting because keith ellison, when he was attorney general in 2018, 2019, was actually told and had old referrals made to his office about fraud and some of the very programs you looked at. This is years ago now. He had official referrals made to him. He said, I just couldn't find any evidence of the fraud. Do you think there is a little bit of corruption at the governmental level in the state of minnesota?
▶ 1:29:17Sen. Hawley: Is that may be a possibility? Maybe some of these guys are on the take you think?
▶ 1:29:20Mr. Shirley: It's not maybe or possibly, it is a certainty.
▶ 1:29:25Sen. Hawley: I would say so too, and I can prove it to. Keith ellison, after overlooking $250 million in fraud, he took 10,000 dollars in campaign contributions from the very people committing fraud who came to see him in his office, asked him to please state investigators off of their backs, which he did, ask them to shut down the investigations, which he helped with. Offered to give them money, which he accepted.
▶ 1:29:53Sen. Hawley: I think that is the answer to why can't any of these people find the fraud? Because they are getting paid by the fraudsters. You are, 24 years old, got the public records, asking questions and it is everywhere to be seen. This kind of corruption -- and it is what sadly the democrat party wants to bring to this country all across america. I don't know why guys like allison are not being prosecuted. He has lied under oath right where you are sitting out. I asked him why he took this money. Said, I didn't take a dime. He took $10,000. It is on the record.
▶ 1:30:24Sen. Hawley: I want to commend you for what you have done. Easter o'keefe, I want to commend you for being here in particular for your investigation. Particularly those into anti-christian bias. I want to ask you about trevor williams, the washington nationals. You found that trevor williams was shut down. He was muffled.
▶ 1:30:45Sen. Hawley: He was gagged by his own team because he had the audacity to say that he didn't think this poster -- I think we got a picture of this. This outrageous desecration of the last supper by this group that calls itself the sisters of professional indulgence, which is an anti-christian group that mocks catholics and other christians, he said he didn't like this, and for that reason if I remember correctly the washington nationals try to shut him down.
▶ 1:31:14Sen. Hawley: Tell us about what your investigation found.
▶ 1:31:17Mr. O'Keefe: This is involving the washington nationals baseball team and civil rights violations and anti-christian bias. And the washington nationals has fired this vice president for his bias against christians and it is part of our exposé exposing officials and corporations and in the administrative state, the deep state, breaking the law, pushing back. Have another one coming out inside the pentagon in the next few days with similar themes.
▶ 1:31:45Sen. Hawley: I look forward to that. Let me say this, where you surprised at all when the commissioner of just a few weeks ago threatened to penalize and find players, two players on the giants who put bible verses onto their -- one on there cap, I think one on new jersey? Commissioner baseball said that is against our rules, we are going to find you?
▶ 1:32:14Sen. Hawley: Did that surprise you given the systemic bias, if I could use that phrase?
▶ 1:32:17Mr. O'Keefe: Nothing surprises me. There is a lot of irony and absurdity in reality, but it is not shock me and I think sunlight, to quote rand eyes, is the best disinfectant. They might do things in the open but I think it is impossible to shame the devil. These candid remarks behind closed doors, where they talk about their intent and motivation. That video caused a firestorm, and to quote nick shirley, the video does not film itself.
▶ 1:32:46Mr. O'Keefe: The citizen journalists get to show up and do the thing. I think it is more difficult for bureaucrats to do that. So, symbols -- citizen journalists are going to do it.
▶ 1:32:55Sen. Hawley: I'm glad you are doing what you are doing. I think because of what you're doing in the trevor williams case the commissioner of major league baseball had to back down when we confronted him on this issue and admit rules permit the players to write these on their jerseys. They permit the players to forgo wearing politically-themed jerseys at all and none of these plays will be fine for expressing their faith.
▶ 1:33:21Sen. Hawley: And I both know he would not have done that had he not being embarrassed by the facts you and others brought forward, so thank you for your work. >> they see a picture is worth 1000 words. I think a video might be worth 10,000 words. It has been said that, well, these were sensationalistic and this is not a proper way to do it, young man, and we should not be doing this in leave this to the government.
▶ 1:33:46Sen. Hawley: But I think the point has also been made very clearly government has these inspector generals, the gao, I'm a fan of both of those groups. I don't know if they have any inspectors that actually go out on the road. Anybody is going and checking on this. I think what you have shown people is, what can happen with pictures. I mean, with video. The pictures made a big difference. As you said, a normal virality of these deals. But there have been indictments.
▶ 1:34:16Sen. Hawley: I think at least 15 indictments, 90 million, one hundred million, an enormous amount of money is being recovered and being found to be misspent. I think that when we look at things sometimes we get lost in just the bad people. And there are bad people. And there always will be bad people. That is why we have to police things. Companies do it instantaneously, you know? Lisa, they instantaneously catching fraud. Your bank is catching fraud. Everybody is.
▶ 1:34:45Sen. Hawley: Ask, why didn't government have someone like nick shirley that worked for them? Why were we doing this? And there is a systemic problem. The systemic problem is worth looking at because systemic problems can fix thousands of downstream problems. Systemic problem is basically this. Sign up for welfare at the state level. Payment comes from the federal level. The states look at federal payment as free because we have a printing press up here.
▶ 1:35:15Sen. Hawley: We just add it to the national debt. $40 trillion debt. The numbers that are spiraling out of control. But food stamps, medicaid, you sign up at the state level, so if you tell a state we are going to pay for 90% or 100% of medicaid. If you expanded is there any incentive for them to check people's credentials to make sure they are eligible for medicaid or food stamps? Is there any incentive to go to the autism center? No, because they are not paying for it.
▶ 1:35:45Sen. Hawley: States have no incentive. So, one of the things senator johnson and I and several others wanted to get added to a bill last year was trying to change some of these percentages. So, ever since obama care they -- obamacare enticed all of the states to expand medicaid and a lot of these programs come under the auspices of medicaid. The government paid 100% of it for, like, three years and now 15 years later the government still paying 90%. Rest of medicaid is closer to 50-50 or 45 percent/55%.
▶ 1:36:18Sen. Hawley: States have skin in the game. If they allow fraud, they are paying for part of the fraud. If 90% is paid by the federal government we had a proposal that would have changed the formula back to this split formula where states pay half and the federal government pays half. I think it was an 800 billion dollars savings over about 10 years. So, we have to do the fraud. We have to police the fraud. We should be learning from what you guys are doing with investigative reporting. We should hire investigators.
▶ 1:36:47Sen. Hawley: If we like inspector generals why don't they have a team of investigators going out and doing what you are doing? So, we should do that, but we also have to as a legislature look at these ratios and at these split performances. And you have to connect them. The people paying have to be doing the oversight. Something is happening but only because you brought it to light. That these videos that some are calling sensationalistic there would be none of this. Adjustment on year after year, decade after decade.
▶ 1:37:18Sen. Hawley: And I think this is the tip of the iceberg. And I commend you for what you have both done with exposing this. As far as the subpoena power, I'm happy to work with senator johnson on this. And I think we can look into particularly the harvesting. In wisconsin when they had the difficult -- the mass mail in ballots in 2020, when probably -- what, over half of your ballots were cast by mail? There was said to be 100,000 that were not even signed.
▶ 1:37:48Sen. Hawley: There was no witness signature. We should be looking into the harvesting if there is evidence with harvesting. People are harvesting ballots in an illegal or illegitimate way that should be looked into. So, I'm happy to look into these companies and we are happy to work with both of you on any information you have to bring to us and I commend you for your work on this and what you have brought to our attention. I think senator johnson had another question or two.
▶ 1:38:17Sen. Schatz: And I do, on the same lines. Are you as disappointed as I am? I have been doing this for 16 years. I have been supportive of ig's, of the gao. It just hasn't worked. I know in your testimony you say the ig's are seeing $71 billion. That is probably self-reported, self-serving. You still have 250 billion dollars to $1 trillion of fraud occurring. It is just not working.
▶ 1:38:50Sen. Schatz: Senator paul is putting his finger on the problem here. When it is free money you don't care about it. I mean, in his opening statement he talked about what private sector companies do to prevent fraud in the front end. It is what we have to do. So, I would really encourage to, let's fund more ig's. Again, I'm supportive of it if it would work, but it doesn't.
▶ 1:39:16Sen. Schatz: And I recognize that so we don't have to completely reform how those bodies operate. But we have got to look at the root cause of these things. We have to align the incentives. I mean, nine to one match is legalized fraud. In medicaid, provider fees, provider taxes. That is not health care.
▶ 1:39:39Sen. Schatz: I literally had a hospital lobby me when we passed the big beautiful little that was going to restrain the percent of provider taxes. Wisconsin was pretty low. To go to 6%. And apparently didn't do it quickly enough so Dr. oz was not going to give us the waiver to allow us to increase the tax up to 6%.
▶ 1:40:04Sen. Schatz: So, you had a hospital go through an intermediary and say, trying get Dr. oz to grant us that waiver because we will be able to charge a 12 lien dollar provider tax. We will get reimbursed for 18 million, so we will come up $6 million ahead. They are not even thinking. You literally are asking for government to allow you to tax your customers $12 million seek and make an additional six.
▶ 1:40:34Sen. Schatz: Again, is legalized fraud. Until we are willing to address the root cause and problem that all of this free government money is not being administered by the states properly, they don't care. They don't care to check eligibility. They get credit for providing all of this health care for their citizens they don't care about the eligibility. Didn't care that a third of the hospice centers are in los angeles county when you defund. None of them even complain. They just don't care.
▶ 1:41:04Sen. Schatz: I guess that is my question to you. No, head of pogo, which I think is a great organization, focus on the root cause. Focus on the legalized fraud. The way these programs are set up. Want to comment on that?
▶ 1:41:17Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: If you would mind, senator. One thing you have pointed out, inspector general, these oversight entities are at their core providers of information. They have no power to change legislation or policy. And they expose things or tell you, here's how you can save x amount of dollars, they cannot actualize that savings. He can come to congress and ask you to do those things, but that is up to congress. Congress is the body that can change the law, change policy.
▶ 1:41:46Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette: I think it is a little bit unfair to say we still have fraud.
▶ 1:41:51Sen. Hawley: I completely agree. The gao has these reports but they don't get implemented. Don't get implemented because if you say you want to actually reduce the legalized fraud in medicaid, we get accused of slashing it. Do you realize medicaid is up 10% year-over-year? We didn't cap medicaid. We didn't even begin to control it. Did not even scratch the surface. It is my point here. We need to understand how pervasive and how rampant this fraud is.
▶ 1:42:20Sen. Hawley: Need to address the actual problem. How these laws are written to be taken advantage of. To create fraud, to let the fraudsters get away. We didn't talk about the potentially foreign organization of this, correct? 700 million dollars in cash flowing out of the minneapolis airport back to, you know, countries in africa? Have either of you gentlemen kind of investigated the foreign sourcing on organizations of a lot of this fraud.
▶ 1:42:48Sen. Hawley: We are opening it up to foreign governments to fund their own operations. >> it has been proven that a lot of money in suitcases that left minnesota went back inside of somalia. In new york city where I did an expose exposing this adult daycare fraud nobody at these daycare's knows who the owner is. A lot of them have been hired within the past month. And in miami you had the cuban government running these companies. They are fleecing and quite literally looting from medicaid.
▶ 1:43:19Sen. Hawley: A lot of foreign governments have infiltrated our medicaid because it is so simple and easy to defraud.
▶ 1:43:25Sen. Jones: And we know it is $7 million because government --
▶ 1:43:29Sen. Jones: Sent -- Sen. jones: and -- again, Mr. chairman, I commend you like the senator for holding this hearing. This is an incredibly important hearing and it speaks volumes that only the ranking member showed up to denigrate Mr. shirley's efforts.
▶ 1:43:53Sen. Jones: That is why he showed up and not one of them are here talking about these hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars worth of fraud that we can't allow to continue because we are mortgaging your future. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:44:06Chair Paul: The autism centers that were abusing this, it is under which program and did they sign up in the state? How do you sign up for the program? >> medicaid. I can't say exactly what one it is.
▶ 1:44:18Sen. Hawley: It is part of medicaid? -- chair paul: it is part of medicaid? Medicaid is this big pool of money but it is split between the federal and state government and we do have to look at it. It is dealing we fix this. The thing is, people look at and say, you don't want to take away health care from poor people. There is another way of looking at this.
▶ 1:44:40Sen. Hawley: What about preserving health care for the poor people who need it and getting rid of somebody who is able-bodied who is lying about a disability and is on medicaid and is actually taking money away from it is irving person? I think there is another way of looking at that.
▶ 1:44:55Sen. Hawley: People are very fearful of any kind of dollars they think every -- they think if you were to cut one dollar from medicaid that is being taken away, but if they can be made to see that yeah you are taking away from some guys stealing 10, 15, $20 million or $7 million, I think this is a good hearing and I think this may lead us to some other things so we can talk about both with the voting fraud atmosphere as well as more. Keep in touch with us and let us know more. Did you have a final comment, senator ernst?
▶ 1:45:26Sen. Ernst: Of course, we always have a final comment. What, no, again, really appreciate our witnesses going and sharing information with us and really reinforcing that we need to do our job as congress as well to ensure that when we do identify areas of fraud and holes that exist in our -- we take the initiative and close it up.
▶ 1:45:55Sen. Ernst: I would remind people in order to do that we do have to have participation from the members on the left. Because in the senate we do require bipartisan movement on any piece of legislation that comes to the senate floor. So if they are not willing to engage in a hearing then it is unlikely they are actually going to engage in code or law that will help us prevent fraud and recover those dollars for
▶ 1:46:25Sen. Ernst: American taxpayers. So, thanks for not only exposing fraud today, but exposing that we don't have support from the left on preventing fraud and actually moving legislation that would solve the problem. So, again, thank y'all for being here today. Thanks to the chair for being willing to hold this hearing.
▶ 1:46:43Chair Paul: I would like to think our witnesses for joining us today. The record for this hearing will remain open until 5:00 p.m. On friday, july 17th, 2026 for the submission of statements and questions for the record. The hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.