Washington – Behind an effort from the White House to sow President Trump’s political enemies with accusations of mortgage fraud is a framework for the construction of 37 -year -old houses with a deep partisan past.
Bill Pulte, originally from Florida, increased on Trump’s orbit towards the end of his first mandate. After having courted Trump for years on social networks and thanks to generous donations, he now directs the Federal Housing Finance Agency – a perch which allowed him to target important personalities who crossed the president.
In the past five months, Pulte has returned three complaints of mortgage fraud against Trump’s enemies to the Ministry of Justice, against Letitia James, the Prosecutor General of New York; Adam Schiff, the California Democratic Senator; And this week, Lisa Cook, governor of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve.
Everyone denied the reprehensible acts. Trump announced Monday evening that he was moving to Fire Cook.
It is an unusual role for an FHFA director, who regulates Fannie MAE – the country’s largest company by assets – and Freddie Mac. The two mortgage organizations, which support almost half of the American residential mortgage market, were taken over by the FHFA during the 2008 economic crisis.
The grandson of one of the manufacturers of the richest and most prolific houses in Michigan, Pulte made a name for himself on Twitter in 2019 with public gifts to individuals in need. He called himself “the inventor of Twitter philanthropy”, promising to give two cars in exchange for a Retweet Trump that year, which he received. He subsequently built a series of more than 3 million.
The files show that Pulte has made Trump a substantial donation, the National Republican Committee and the related Super PACs leading to the 2024 elections.
The letters from Pulte to Atty. General Pam Bondi was closely and cautiously written. But his publications on social networks, celebrating targeted attacks, did not do so.
“Trump becomes the first president to withdraw a governor from the federal federal reserve,” he wrote on X, between the Retweets of right-wing commentators praising this decision. “Mortgage fraud can bring up to 30 years in prison.”
In another article on X, quoting a title of CNN, Pulte wrote that the dismissal of Cook by Trump “increased his battle against the central bank” – seeming to recognize that cook targeting was motivated by the continuous grievances of Trump with the leadership of the Fed.
The dismissal of Cook is legally doubtful, and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that Cook plans to continue the administration while continuing to exercise his functions for the Fed. Lowell also represents James in his defense against the case of the Ministry of Justice.
While the Supreme Court ruled in May that Trump could dismiss individuals from independent federal agencies, the judges distinguished the Fed as an exception, calling it as a “almost unique structured entity”. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 stipulates that the president cannot dismiss a member of his management only “for good”.
But the cause was not definitively established to draw Cook, Pulte writing in his letter to Bondi that the governor of the Fed had “potentially” committed mortgage fraud, accusing him of falsification of banking documents and property files to acquire more favorable loan conditions.
Pulte accused Cook of listing two houses – in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at Atlanta – as a main address within two weeks of buying them by funding. Cook said that she would “answer all questions about my financial history” seriously and “gathered precise information to answer all legitimate questions and provide the facts”.
The other accusations of Pulte, against James and Schiff, were also superficial, publicly accusing individuals of potential crime before a complete and independent investigation can take place.
And if these surveys will be impartial is far from clear. Earlier this month, Bondi appointed Ed Martin, a conspiracy theorist who supported the “Stop The Flight” movement after Joe Biden’s electoral victory against Trump in 2020, as a special prosecutor to investigate James and Schiff business.
Pulte accused James – who succeeded in accused Trump of financial fraud in a civil action last year – of falsification of banking declarations and goods files to obtain more favorable loan conditions for houses in Virginia and New York. He made similar complaints of weeks later about Schiff, who maintains residences in California and the suburbs of Washington, DC
Schiff, who led an accusation of Trump’s house during the president’s first mandate and remained one of his most vocal and energetic political opponents since he joined the Senate, rejected the allegations of the president as an “attempted political remote”.
A Schiff spokesperson said that he had always been transparent about the possession of two houses, in part to be able to raise his children near him in Washington, and has always followed the law – and the advice of the room lawyer – to organize his mortgages.
By making his statements, Trump quoted an investigation by the “Division of Financial Division” by Fannie MAE as a source.
A memorandum examined by the Times of Fannie Mae in Pulte investigators does not accuse Schiff of mortgage fraud. He noted that the investigators had been interviewed by the office of the Inspector General of the FHFA for loan files and “any investigation or related quality documentation” for Schiff houses.
Investigators said they had found that Schiff at various points identified both his house in Potomac, in the MD., And a Burbank unit which he also has as his main residence. Consequently, they concluded that Schiff and his wife, Eve, “engaged in a sustained scheme of false declaration of occupation possible” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020.
The investigators did not say that they have concluded that a crime had been committed, and they did not mention the word “fraud” in the note.
