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Leavitt and Vance Brief the Media, Jan. 8, 2026: New Fraud Prosecutor Announced

January 8, 2026 · The White House · 0:38:01

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What happened

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened the January 8, 2026 briefing by defending the ICE operation in Minnesota the day before, in which a woman was shot by an ICE officer. ICE officers, she said as the administration stated the figures, are facing a 1,200 percent increase in assaults, a 3,200 percent increase in vehicle rammings, and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats. She said the Department of Homeland Security would continue operating in Minnesota, conducting door-to-door investigations of what she described as rampant fraud in the state — taxpayers “ripped off to the tune of billions of dollars in this one state alone,” as she stated it — with thousands of federal agents activated and the number of U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis doubled.

Vice President JD Vance then announced the briefing’s news item: the creation of a new assistant attorney general position at the Department of Justice to investigate fraud — in Minnesota and nationwide — which he said would “kick into high gear” the work of getting tougher on people defrauding the United States. On the Minneapolis shooting, the Vice President described the woman killed as having obstructed a law-enforcement operation and aimed her car at an officer; the death, he said, was “absolutely a tragedy, but it’s a tragedy of the making of the far left.” He said the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security were both investigating the incident.

Why it matters

The briefing pairs the administration’s two Minnesota files — immigration enforcement and the fraud investigations — and gives the fraud file a new dated instrument: a dedicated assistant attorney general, announced by the Vice President who chairs the White House fraud task force. It is filed on the Fraud, Waste & Corruption hub for that announcement, with the enforcement figures and the shooting account recorded as the officials stated them.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the new assistant attorney general position for fraud investigations, announced at this briefing by Vice President Vance. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; the entry itself stays review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and the Vice President, Jan. 8, 2026,” The White House, January 8, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated at the briefing.