A freelance journalist who has spent months infiltrating suspected fraud operations across the country stepped in front of a national television audience Sunday night and unloaded — calling out Democratic lawmakers by name and accusing them of running interference for schemes bleeding taxpayers dry.
Nick Shirley, an independent reporter who has built a following by going where legacy media won’t, sat down with Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show” and did not come to make friends.
His target: Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whom he accused of embodying the political cover that allows large-scale government fraud to thrive unchallenged.
“It’s a bit suspicious to have your net worth go by millions and then just recently say that it’s an error. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever put two extra zeros as an error when I file any report,” Shirley told co-host Guy Benson.
He went further. “So, Ilhan Omar, we know who she is, we know that she is like the queen of the fraud, actually. So, Ilhan Omar, no respect to her whatsoever.”
Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The congresswoman’s finances have drawn federal scrutiny before. During the Biden administration, the Justice Department opened a probe into how Omar’s net worth climbed after she arrived on Capitol Hill, with investigators focusing in part on income tied to her husband.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa added fuel to that fire during a January 8 appearance on “Varney and Company,” alleging Omar had quietly tried to slip an earmark exceeding $1 million into legislation — funds that would have flowed to a substance abuse clinic critics described as suspicious, operating out of a Somali-owned restaurant.
Shirley’s reporting first cracked into the national conversation late last year when he released footage of visits to multiple day care centers in Minnesota, facilities allegedly operated by Somali migrants and allegedly used as conduits for siphoning millions in welfare dollars.
Earlier this year, he turned his camera toward hospice centers in the Los Angeles area and emerged with a claim that stopped many viewers cold: at least $170 million in fraudulent activity, uncovered during a single 40-minute investigation posted online.
California Democrats moved quickly. A bill emerged in the state legislature — AB2624 — sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Mia Bonta. At least one Republican in the chamber wasted no time giving it an unofficial name: the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.” Critics say the legislation would shield nonprofits and immigrant service organizations receiving government money from the kind of disclosure requirements that make investigations like Shirley’s possible.
Shirley posted a video Saturday confronting California lawmakers over the proposed measure directly.
The assemblywoman’s last name is not a coincidence. Mia Bonta is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a Democrat — a detail co-host Tomi Lahren raised on air Sunday.
Shirley did not let the irony pass without comment. “Their goal as a family should be to prosecute and take care and make sure that there is so little fraud in the state that they can have such a peaceful night of sleep,” he said. “However, while the attorney general is supposed to be prosecuting fraud, his wife is creating laws to let fraud continue, specifically saying that NGOs who receive money based off immigrant services don’t have to disclose their money.”
The pressure on Shirley has extended beyond legislative maneuvers. He told Lahren that people have been tracking his physical location and sharing it in group chats, and that the pattern has repeated itself enough to make routine travel feel dangerous. He said he has received “constant death threats.”
Despite it all, Shirley framed his work not as partisan combat but as a public service that elected officials on both sides of the aisle should be supporting rather than fighting.
“They should be working with me to crack down on this fraud instead of wanting to make me look like the bad person,” he said. “Maybe it is because that fraud makes them look bad, but in reality I’m there to help everyone out. This is not Republican or a Democrat issue. There’s a lot more fraud in Democrat states… For them to make these attacks is quite frankly very stupid of them to do that when I am providing a huge public service.”
