Pa. native, former US Attorney Scott Brady to lead Trump anti-fraud initiative

Brady investigated Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, in Trump's first term.

• By Tom Riese, WESA

This story was originally published by WESA. 

The former western Pennsylvania prosecutor who led an investigation into the son of President Joe Biden has been picked by the Trump administration to lead an anti-fraud campaign.

Scott Brady, a former U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, will be the executive director of the new White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud alongside members of Trump’s cabinet, according to a spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance on Monday.

At the group’s first meeting Friday, Vance said the creation of the office was inspired by cases of Medicaid fraud in Minnesota.

“We’re going to force the bureaucracy to take this seriously and work together as political principals to make sure that we stop allowing fraudsters to steal the American people’s money,” Vance told reporters on Friday. And Vance alleged the Biden administration rolled back anti-fraud protections: “It became a massive, massive problem.”

Skeptics of the administration’s claims say that claims of fraud in a program like Medicaid can be exaggerated. And while they acknowledge fraud does take place, observers say it can also be invoked as a justification for benefit cuts or other policy changes that may otherwise be unpopular.

Brady is a native of Greenville, Mercer County and was appointed by President Trump in 2017 to lead the US attorney’s office in Western Pennsylvania. While holding that post, Brady oversaw investigations of fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic and directed the prosecution of the Tree of Life synagogue shooter. He also steered parts of the corruption investigation into Hunter Biden during Trump’s first term.

Brady, along with more than 50 other Trump nominees, was asked to resign from the Department of Justice after Joe Biden took office in 2021. But he was again hired by the Trump administration in January, and brought on as special counsel for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services department.

A former adjunct professor at Pitt, Brady also worked under the Bush and Obama administrations as an assistant U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh.

“Scott Brady is a brilliant lawyer and selfless public servant,” said Joe Simonson, senior policy advisor for the task force, in an email.

Brady himself did not return a message Monday seeking comment on his new position.

State social-services spending is bolstered by federal dollars, and the White House’s anti-fraud campaign also appears poised to limit subsidies to states if it deems their anti-fraud procedures insufficient.

By mid-April, the task force is expected to identify “processes that are most susceptible to fraud schemes” at each federal department and report its findings to Trump, according to the executive order which established the group.

“The Task Force and its member agencies also shall examine and recommend, as appropriate, any ways that Federal funds may be withheld from jurisdictions that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements,” the order says.

In his state budget address last month, Gov. Josh Shapiro pushed Pennsylvania lawmakers to pass a whistleblower-protections law that he says will help recoup state dollars lost to fraud.

“As Attorney General, I prosecuted dozens of fraudsters and those who stole public benefits,” said Shapiro, who was elected governor after serving six years as AG, during his speech. “We combat fraud wherever we find it, and we put our real resources into this effort because it’s important to ensure that public dollars go to the people who really need them.”

But Andrew Ferguson, vice chairman for the task force, blamed “blue states” for overlooking fraud while reading from prepared remarks on Friday.

Ferguson, who leads the Federal Trade Commission, said that by draining financial resources from safety-net programs, fraud “wounds the neediest among us, the very people that Americans want to help when they fund our social welfare programs.”