WASHINGTON, June 10 -- Vice President JD Vance asked the Justice Department on Monday to open a criminal investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the state's attorney general, Keith Ellison, routing the request through a new fraud division whose defining feature is its closeness to the White House that just named its first famous targets.

Vance, who has led the administration's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud since Donald Trump declared a war on fraud in his State of the Union address, acted on a report from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee alleging that Minnesota's senior officials were aware of pervasive abuse of federally funded social programs for years and let payments flow long after credible warnings reached th...