Independent journalist Nick Shirley sat down with Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday to reveal the personal dangers he now faces as he continues to investigate suspected welfare fraud across Democrat-led states.
Shirley first captured national attention on December 26, 2025, when he released a 42-minute YouTube video documenting his visits to multiple Minnesota facilities operated by Somalis and advertised as day care centers.
The video spread rapidly across social media.
Vice President JD Vance reposted the footage on December 27, writing that Shirley had done “far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes.”
The exposé helped transform what had been a regional issue into a national conversation about welfare fraud and government oversight.
Shortly after the Minnesota video circulated, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced on January 5, 2026, that he would not seek a third term, days after Shirley’s footage of the Somali-run facilities reached a mass audience.
On Monday, Shirley released a follow-up 40-minute video on X documenting a separate investigation, this time into Los Angeles hospice centers. He claimed his team uncovered at least $170 million in suspected fraud through that probe.
Following the release of the California video, Shirley turned to his followers on X, posting a message explaining why he needed financial help.
McEnany read the post aloud during the interview: “After last night and the constant doxing attempts and threats from people who want to attack me largely due to politicians and leftist hate-filled rhetoric as I exposed billion dollar fraud schemes stealing from taxpayers, I’ve decided it’s time to raise money for security costs.”
Shirley told McEnany the threats have become a consistent pattern across multiple cities where he has filmed.
“Yeah, so, people try to dox my location live, especially in a lot of times when I go to these cities now. It sucks because I’ll go to a city, I’ll go be out filming, I will take a photo. Some activists, some left-wing activists, will then take a photo, [and] put me in a Reddit group chat,” Shirley said.
He described specific instances where online groups coordinated to confront him in public. “This happened to me in Baltimore. It just happened this last weekend in California, and they’ll say, and they say, ‘Run Nick Shirley out,’ or they’ll say, ‘If you see Nick Shirley, it’s on site.’ And so this has happened in multiple cities,” he added.
Shirley explained that his security funds were depleted following the Minnesota investigation, forcing him to seek outside support before he could film any additional videos.
“I had money for security. After Minnesota, that money went down to pretty much nothing, so, unfortunately, I had to raise funds again to be able to have security, to be able to go film these videos, [and] to film one of these videos now,” he told McEnany.
The financial burden of continuing his work has grown substantially. “I used to be able to film these videos without security.”
“Now it costs anywhere from— the last hospice video cost $15,000 to go film because I had to have security for three days to go film this video,” he added.
“And so it’s extremely hard to go out and do that, so I asked my fans and viewers if they could help me out with the security costs,” Shirley stated.
