Report Government Fraud. The President Will Decide Who Wins.

You can help expose fraud in the federal government. If somebody else says they helped first, Donald Trump would like to settle the matter personally. Bring your evidence of government dysfunction to the president's new side hustle in dispute resolution.

The $25 million program Trump and JD Vance announced Tuesday offers rewards for tips that produce a fraud conviction or a significant federal enforcement action. AP reports a White House ceiling of $30,000 per qualifying tip; Trump described a 1% commission. Those are consequential terms for anyone considering whether public service now comes with a competitive referral bonus.

The Justice Department will administer the program. But for competing claims to a reward, Trump announced, “I will be the arbitrator of all these decisions.” He said the arbitration would be binding. A government sophisticated enough to investigate financial fraud apparently needs the president to resolve who saw it first.

That is the part worth watching. The tipster has to produce something useful to enforcement. The president gets to determine which competing tipster collects. One side must follow the evidence through a federal case; the other has already appointed himself. Excellent turnaround time on that application.

Trump also invited journalists to participate. There is an appealing offer: investigate the government, then approach its most powerful official to ask whether your work deserves a payment. The awkwardness could be reduced considerably by keeping the first job and declining the second.

An incentive can bring forward real information. A conviction or significant enforcement action is a meaningful condition, and it would be dishonest to pretend every allegation earns a check. That makes the personal arbitration promise stranger, not less strange. After the machinery of government establishes a result, the final argument over credit can still travel upstairs to one man's judgment. The evidence gets a process. The prize gets Trump.

Our FBI loyalty-test piece examined the risks of making investigative work depend on presidential approval. Here approval is being offered as a financial attraction. You needn't threaten everybody's employment if you can make everybody compete for your congratulations.

The program asks citizens to take government accountability seriously. Fine. Start with its own distribution of authority. DOJ gets the administration, tipsters get the burden of proving usefulness, and Trump reserves the close calls. For a man delegating the hunt for waste to the public, he has kept a remarkably personal interest in allocating the rewards.

Find the fraud, establish the case, demonstrate that the tip was yours. Then hope nobody else claims it. Your journey through impersonal law enforcement may end in a meeting about whether the president likes your claim better.