Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff, brushed off a federal fraud investigation on a recorded call because it had nothing to do with Minnesota’s Somali community, according to a new report.
During a December 2025 call, Miller, then deputy chief of staff, pressed administration officials for evidence of fraud related to immigrants, Minnesota and the state’s Somali population nine times in about 10 minutes, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Sun.
At one point, Miller cut off an official who was describing a fraud problem in Florida. The government’s own data shows Florida is a hot spot for people who siphon off government benefits. According to the outlet, Miller “appeared uninterested in the official’s description of fraud when it didn’t prominently feature immigrants.”
Later on the call, Miller was told about an active criminal investigation into a national fraud case out of the Eastern District of Virginia.
“I hear you, but that’s a long way off from Minneapolis,” Miller responded.
The Sun reported that the call was one of several previously unreported instances since fall 2025 in which Miller pushed officials to target Minnesota’s roughly 100,000 Somali residents.
A White House official told the outlet the call “was focused on rooting out fraud in Minnesota” and that there is “no denying the Somali population was a large part of the massive fraud in the state.” More than 80 of the nearly 100 people charged in Minnesota’s sprawling social services fraud scandal by the end of last year were of Somali descent.
Some administration officials were frustrated with Miller’s narrow focus. Two officials told the Sun that the effort “was not necessarily fraud writ large” but targeted “the specific population of immigrants.” One called the campaign “inane.”
“It’s like a passion project for him,” a source close to the White House said.
The government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion a year to fraud, according to the Government Accountability Office. Linda Miller, a former GAO fraud expert who now leads the Program Integrity Alliance, told the Sun that immigration isn’t the main driver.
“There is an actual fraud problem here. It’s just not a fraud problem related to immigration, and it’s not even a fraud problem related primarily to individual beneficiaries,” she said. “It’s a much bigger, more systematic problem.”
Miller’s push still reached at least five federal agencies, according to the report. It led to frozen Medicaid and food assistance funding for Minnesota and a Treasury order requiring financial firms in two Minnesota counties to report every international transaction over $3,000. Treasury staff worried that order violated constitutional protections against overly broad searches.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement that Trump “has launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government” and that the administration “has a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who steals from the American taxpayer.”
Miller takes over as chief of staff on Monday.
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