California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton said Saturday that his campaign-aligned watchdog group has identified "hundreds of millions of dollars" in taxpayer fraud in the state and estimated "a total of $250 billion of fraud in California."
"Of course, the worst in the nation, the biggest fraud is going on right here in California," Hilton said on Newsmax's "The Count."
"We're just getting started in California."
Hilton said federal and state-level scrutiny has accelerated in recent months and pointed out that his campaign has launched "Cal DOGE, the California Department of Government Efficiency," to root out fraud.
"We published our first fraud report," Hilton said.
"We found this just in a matter of days, going through the budget, $370 million stolen from the cannabis tax, which was supposed to be going for substance abuse prevention, actually being siphoned off to Democrat activist causes like voter registration and pushing narratives, as they call it, that help them politically," he said.
"A slush fund for Democrat politics."
Hilton said his group has "referred that for prosecution as well," and vowed, "We're going to uncover all of it."
Asked how he would stop fraud if elected, Hilton said he is running "as a team" with a proposed running mate for state comptroller and another for attorney general.
The comptroller, he said, "has the power to audit every single organization receiving state money, and then to turn off the money flow where there's fraud and corruption."
"He's going to prosecute the fraud, and we're going to get the money back," he added.
"The big point about all of this is that when we find and stop the fraud, that's how we reduce spending, which is how we cut taxes," Hilton said.
"That's what I'm going to do as governor of California."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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