The assistant AG will report directly to the president and vice president.
President Donald Trump announced a head for the new national fraud enforcement division of the Justice Department in a Jan. 28 post on Truth Social.
“I am pleased to nominate Colin McDonald to serve as the first ever Assistant Attorney General for National FRAUD Enforcement, a new Division at the Department of Justice, which I created to catch and stop FRAUDSTERS that have been STEALING from the American People,” Trump said, noting that fraud schemes recently uncovered in Minnesota and California were found to have stolen “hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.”
Trump commended McDonald for successfully delivering justice in “some of the most difficult and high stakes” cases.
“Congratulations Colin—STOP THE SCAMS!” Trump said.
McDonald has been working as an associate deputy attorney general since April 2025, and earlier as a senior counsel to the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.
“Colin is a rockstar, who was instrumental in our team’s mission of Making America Safe Again,” Blanche said in a Jan. 28 post on X.
McDonald served as a judicial law clerk for the District Court of the Southern District of California beginning in 2012 and worked as a federal prosecutor between 2014 and 2025 in Southern California and Hawaii.
While in Hawaii, McDonald helped convict former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife, former prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, of a number of crimes, including bank fraud and conspiring to frame a relative with a crime to conceal their own fraud.
Chief U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright said at the time that the Kealohas’ crimes “staggered the community” and had “truly shaken confidence in our governing institutions.”
New Fraud Division
Trump announced the creation of the Department of Justice’s new division for national fraud enforcement on Jan. 8 for combating the “pervasive problem of fraud” in the country.
The division will enforce criminal and civil laws against fraud targeting federal government programs, federally funded benefits, businesses, nonprofits, and private citizens nationwide
The issue has come into the spotlight with the uncovering of alleged widespread fraud schemes in states such as Minnesota.
