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Andrew Ferguson and Joe Simonson Squeal about Their $277 Fraud Charges
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This is the summary of allegedly fraudulent expenditures charged against Esmerelda Soriano, an Orange County food cart owner indicted on two counts of SNAP fraud.
Devlin Barrett highlighted her case in a story about how Trump is focusing on low-level fraud while pardoning far bigger fraudsters. Barrett describes how JD Vance — whom taxpayers pay $235,100 a year so he can get his son flown by helicopter to his golf lesson — focused on this kind of case in a speech in April.
Soriano Produce, a weathered white food truck advertising ice cream treats as well as fruits and vegetables, drew the attention of undercover agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement for what investigators said was a startlingly high number of food stamp transactions for such a small business.
The case against the food truck owner, Esmeralda Soriano, is an example of the Trump administration’s push to show that “no fraud is small enough or big enough to look away from,” as Vice President JD Vance said in a speech in April.
The new emphasis on small-dollar fraud comes as the administration has issued pardons and commutations to white-collar convicts, pulled back from pursuing criminal cases against multinational corporations and dropped high-profile charges against wealthy executives.
Barrett doesn’t mention that Todd Blanche has also bragged about focusing DOJ resources on $1,001 fraud cases.
In response to the story, the FTC’s propagandist and sometime Free Beacon hack, Joe Simonson (whom Ballotpedia describes being paid $197,200 as a part time detailee to the White House), wrote a 7-tweet screed, calling NYT a “mid-cap tech company,” pretending Barrett’s story opposed prosecuting fraud, and wailing because (he said) the NYT hates Trump for pointing out what a waste of resources this is.
The New York Times, a mid-cap tech company known for its crossword puzzles and recipes, is out today attacking the DOJ and @VP for working to arrest fraudsters. If you just read the headline and you’ll assume we’re bullying small business owners for not having the right permits.
[snip]
Interview a normal person to see if they think it’s a good idea that this administration is holding fraudsters accountable? Nope, let’s talk to this partisan weirdo instead.
The New York Times hates President Trump and Vice President Vance. That’s not a new. But how could that hatred drive them to attack bipartisan, antifraud work? Maybe they don’t just hate the President and Vice President. Maybe they hate you for caring about getting ripped off.
Nowhere in his 7-tweet screed did Joe the Free Beacon hack manage to link Barrett’s story. Nowhere in his 7-tweet screed did he manage to mention that the two charged crimes amount to $277, $724 less than even what Blanche said he was going to go after (though DOJ suspects that Soriano committed fraud on a far grander scale, to the tune of hundreds of million). Nowhere did he mention that DOJ asked to cage Soriano while she awaits trial, which would itself cost more than the alleged crime.
Nowhere did Joe the Free Beacon hack mention that HSI investigated this crime, which not only means investigators adhere to a far lower standard for investigating crimes than the FBI would, but they diverted their attention away from investigating things like child sex trafficking to hunt down $277 in charged SNAP crimes.
Nowhere did Joe the Free Beacon hack mention that this focus on low-level fraud arises, in part, from a stupid directive Aakash Singh (whose exact salary is not public, but is somewhere north of $160,000, a huge boost from the $64,362 Chuck Grassley used to pay him) imposed, which has correlated with a significant drop in white collar crime prosecutions.
To try to drive up the number of cases, department officials have internally declared that each assistant U.S. attorney should have at least 25 open cases at all times. For a low-level prosecutor handling common drug or violent offenses — or food stamp fraud — that is not particularly high. For a senior prosecutor handling complex public corruption or corporate fraud investigations, two dozen open cases can be a crushing workload.
In phone calls to prosecutors around the country, a senior Justice Department official, Aakash Singh, has pushed back against criticism of the rule. That threshold of 25 cases is the bare minimum to show that a prosecutor “has a pulse,” he has told officials, according to people familiar with his remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the details of internal discussions.
[snip]
From the start of Mr. Trump’s second term to this May, the administration brought 4,747 white-collar cases, or about 5 percent of the total criminal cases, according to federal statistics analyzed by Justice Connection, a group of former department employees that has been critical of the Trump administration’s sweeping changes.
Those figures are a significant drop from previous administrations (5,554 cases from the same period under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; 6,626 cases in Mr. Trump’s first term; and 8,781 cases in President Barack Obama’s second term).
Nowhere did Joe the Free Beacon hack mention that Orange County’s DA — who would, traditionally, prosecute this kind of low level crime — is also working on this case. So is USDA’s Inspector General, who might otherwise investigate why Brooke Rollins (who is paid $253,100) was engaged in pay-to-play with a SNAP contractor.
Concurrently with Army 250, a fundraising mechanism was being test driven at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), using the congressionally-chartered nonprofit partner of the U.S. Forest Service, the National Forest Foundation (NFF), as the enabling fundraising nonprofit.
The test drive centered on the Great American Farmers Market (GAFM), which was staged in 2025 and billed as “a weeklong celebration of food, family, and farming.”28 Planning meeting agendas for the staff of USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins—which were obtained by Committee Democrats—showed that she or her staff intended to solicit donations for the event from companies with business before the federal government, since USDA was a sponsor of the event.29
[snip]
Four companies—Chobani LLC, Visa, Inc., John Deere, and Tractor Supply Company—each contributed between $100,000 and $499,999,33 routing the money to the “Secretary’s Priorities” fund, which gives the USDA Secretary wide latitude to spend on “initiatives that are directly aligned with the mission and priorities of the USDA Forest Service.”34
At least three of the four contributors held clear business interests before the government. Chobani holds over $12 million in contracts with USDA that are described as “commodities for [U.S. government] food donations” and are derived from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Child Nutrition Programs, Food and Nutrition Service accounts.35 Visa was fighting an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.36 John Deere was fighting an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission.37 The company had also been singled out in 2024 by then-candidate Trump with a threatened 200 percent tariff if John Deere moved its manufacturing to Mexico.38 Put plainly, companies with matters pending before the federal government paid into a fund controlled by a Cabinet secretary, routed through a conservation charity that had to manufacture a forestry rationale to accept the checks.
After Joe the Free Beacon hack posted his 7-tweet screed, his boss, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson (who makes around $197,200), RTed the 7-tweet screed with a flame and a thread emoji, falsely claiming that any of this demonstrated Ferguson and JD Vance’s little Fraud Task Force’s commitment to prosecuting all fraud.
🔥🧵from @SaysSimonson
. As usual, Joe is exactly correct about this. When we said we’re going to stop fraud against government programs, we meant ALL fraud. Every dollar this woman allegedly stole from American citizens was an injustice. She’s getting what she deserves: JUSTICE.This is all intended to serve as theater claiming to hunt waste fraud and abuse.
This theater is costing taxpayers far, far more than the charged crime in this case. Just a single helicopter flight to a golf lesson for 9-year old Ewan Vance costs more than this charged crime.
And taxpayers are paying Joe the Free Beacon hack to distract you from that fact.
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