A newly surfaced recording shows one of President Donald Trump’s most powerful aides fixating on a single group during an official call.
Stephen Miller, then serving as deputy chief of staff, repeatedly pressed Trump administration officials during a December 2025 call to produce evidence of fraud tied to immigrants, Minnesota and the state’s Somali population, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Sun and reported Friday. By the outlet’s count, Miller raised it nine times in about 10 minutes.
The report landed the same day Trump named Miller his new White House chief of staff, handing formal power to an aide who has long steered the president’s domestic agenda.
When one official began describing fraud in Florida, a state the government’s own data flags as a magnet for benefits theft, Miller cut them off, the Sun reported. He also waved off an active national fraud investigation out of the Eastern District of Virginia.
“I hear you, but that’s a long way off from Minneapolis,” Miller responded.
“It’s like a passion project for him,” a source close to the White House told the Sun.
Miller’s directives touched at least five federal agencies over the past year, the Sun reported. In the fall of 2025, he leaned on Treasury officials to dig into Minnesota bank reports. The department ultimately ordered financial firms in two Minnesota counties to report every international transaction above $3,000, a step some staffers worried could violate constitutional limits on sweeping searches.
The Trump administration also froze hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid money to the state and threatened child care and food aid. A federal enforcement surge in Minnesota, which the White House partly justified by pointing to fraud, saw federal agents kill two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, in January.
Two Trump administration officials told the Sun that Miller’s narrow focus frustrated colleagues who wanted a broader approach to fraud, with one calling the campaign “inane.” A senior administration official said Colin McDonald, who leads the Justice Department’s new fraud division, is “basically doing Miller’s bidding.”
Minnesota did face a genuine fraud scandal, with nearly 100 people charged by late 2025 in schemes against social safety net programs, more than 80 of them of Somali descent.
A White House official said 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.”
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