Vice President JD Vance accused former President Joe Biden of failing to crack down on fraud in government pandemic-relief programs, and said a task force he leads is "looking into" the previous administration's handling of the issue.
Vance lashed out at Biden during a Sept. 14 event in Kansas City focused on fraud in programs created to help businesses impacted by COVID-19's economic fallout, highlighting a problem Biden has blamed on lax oversight during President Donald Trump's first term.
"This was early on in the Biden administration," Vance said of fraud in a pandemic-era program that began under Trump. "So everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew people were skimming off the top. It's just the federal government wasn't doing anything
to stop it ... absolutely we need to be looking into the officials who are turning a blind eye to this stuff."
The vice president announced that 870,000 people suspected of defrauding the government on COVID loans would be banned from getting future government loans and touted recent fraud prosecutions. Asked about the Biden administration's approach to fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program passed by Congress in early 2020 when Trump was president, Vance added "certainly the fraud taskforce is looking into that."
Trump tapped Vance to lead a new anti-fraud initiative earlier this year. The vice president has been traveling the country promoting the effort and accusing Democrat-led states of not doing enough to stop fraud in programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance for lower income individuals.
In turning to the Paycheck Protection Program, Vance is reaching back to an initiative that gave out huge amounts of money to businesses during the waning days of Trump's first term, and continuing into the Biden administration.
"If you talk to any state governor, the small business administrator, any United States senator in 2022 or 2023, we knew that the PPP program was rife with fraud," Vance said Sept. 14.
Concerns about fraud in the PPP program emerged shortly after it was passed at the beginning of the pandemic. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released a report in September 2020 examining the Trump administration's distribution of more than 5.2 million loans totaling $525 billion since April of that year. It found that thousands of loans were improperly awarded.
Republicans on the committee defended the program at the time. Many businesses said it helped keep them afloat when the economy cratered during the pandemic.
Biden announced in his 2022 State of the Union address that the Justice Department was appointing a "chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud" and said Trump "undermined the watchdogs whose job was to keep pandemic relief funds from being wasted."
"In my administration, the watchdogs have been welcomed back," Biden added. "We're going after the criminals who stole billions in relief money meant for small businesses and millions of Americans."
Vance was joined by Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel at the fraud event in Kansas City.
The Department of Justice has pursued a number of politically-charged cases during Trump's second term, including failed efforts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The DOJ also has examined pardons issued by Biden after Trump urged an investigation into whether he misused the autopen to sign important documents. Biden denied any wrongdoing and the probe reportedly has ended.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Vance says task force probing Biden's handling of pandemic-era fraud
