The on-again, off-again, new forever war we’ve been cursed with because Donald Trump felt people just weren’t paying attention to him enough is going to be headache for years to come. Trump assumes that if he acts like a bully, everyone will just back down. But now he’s dealing with a regime just as willing to go to extremes, which makes this war look more like a knife fight in a jail yard than anything worth forcing other people to die for.
Since Trump doesn’t like to hear anything that might undermine his preconceptions, he’s been notoriously resistant to national security briefings since his first term in office. Trump always assumes he’s the smartest person in the room, even though he’s never the most alert person in the room.
Making sure he only hears what he wants to hear is a full-time job for everyone surrounding the president. And when a toady one step closer to the throne senses someone might say something that upsets the boss, they grab the deck chairs and move them around.
Consequently, the desire for unquestioning loyalty and the ability to be forgettable enough that no one will remember them when they’re gone has given us an insanely stupid succession of people chosen to be the Director of National Intelligence.
Tulsi Gabbard — his first pick — jumped straight to MAGA from the Democratic Party. This absurd abandonment of principles was repaid by Trump pressuring her out of the DNI position after it became clear she didn’t agree with all of Trump’s off-the-cuff assertions about the threat posed by Iran. Not that she hadn’t proven to be pretty much useless — if not actually dangerous — anywhere else in the federal government before then, but this exit meant she wouldn’t be doing anything else for as long as Trump still controls the White House.
As the Trump administration failed to sell MAGA GOP members on re-upping the surveillance program they were all suing about only months ago, the president elevated another one of his buddies to the DNI position.
That’s not relevant experience. But relevant experience no longer matters. What does matter is asking not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for Trump.
This is particularly concerning because of Pulte’s history of using private information held by the government as a political weapon. In his FHFA role, he has accused several of the President’s political foes and targets – including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – of mortgage fraud based on private data held by his agency.
Pulte’s subservience wasn’t enough to keep him permanently employed, something I hope will eat away at him for the rest of his life. Trump already had an actual nominee lined up: Jay Clayton. Clayton is now perhaps best known for refusing to say who won the 2020 election, which makes it clear he’s here to serve Trump, rather than the country’s national security interests. But it didn’t stop him from being approved this week.
The president in early June tapped federal mortgage regulator Bill Pulte, a political ally with no prior national security experience, to be acting director of national intelligence. Trump said at the time that he wanted Pulte to “start the process” of eliminating some workers.
To be fair, this was hardly a process that needed to be “started.” Under Tulsi Gabbard, staffing at all intelligence agencies that report to the ODNI had shrunk from 2,000 to 1,300. But at the ODNI itself, jobs still seemed pretty safe. Until just recently.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has shrunk more than is publicly known in recent weeks, losing about 200 personnel to firings and reassignments since June 1, according to data the Trump administration shared with Congress this week.
The cuts are the latest to hit ODNI, which was created to oversee and coordinate all U.S. spy agencies but has been targeted by President Donald Trump and many Republicans in Congress.
That’s 200 firings/reassignments in just the last month. The war with Iran has been ongoing since February 28th, triggered by US air strikes on the nation. Despite the occasional Truth Social post declaring outright victory, the war drags on and it doesn’t appear the administration is capable of closing it out without caving to a long list of Iranian demands.
So, of course, this is the time to be escalating the dismissal of national intelligence personnel. When the threat level is the highest, the administration continues its politically motivated purges, putting everyone in this nation (and the nations around the war zone) at increased risk of attack.
And this is political. The people getting purged aren’t people who call Trump “sir” and the Defense Department the “Department of War.” The people who actually serve a valuable purpose in protecting this nation from all threats are being removed because they might stumble across evidence that indicates this administration is bringing this country down from the inside.
Trump has often maintained a hostile posture toward professional intelligence personnel and their agencies, claiming they tried to undermine him in his first term, particularly with the compiling of reports on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election to aid his campaign. The president has dismissed intelligence analysis on a range of issues, from North Korea’s nuclear policy to Iran’s likely reaction to the attacks the U.S. and Israel launched in February.
Trump only wants people who nod, cower, and obey. The people around him who desperately want to keep their jobs are throwing anyone not sufficiently MAGA-cooked under the nearest bus and immediately letting Trump know they’ve disappeared the dissidents.
An entire nation could burn and the only thing these people would say is that the nation’s burning was necessary to save the Republic that’s being flipped by no-bid construction crews into a vainglorious edifice worthy only of a tyrant. This administration is incapable of managing crises. But it’s super-great at creating them. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to look back at this as a turning point in US history. If we’re not, we won’t get to look back at it at all.
President Trump’s highly politicized appointment of an entirely unqualified acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) underscores why the government’s warrantless mass spying power must be reformed.
Congress now faces a deadline of Friday, June 12 to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an unconstitutional program rife with problems, loopholes, and compliance issues. Section 702 allows the National Security Agency to collect communications from targets overseas – including communications with Americans in the U.S. – and stores them in massive databases. The NSA then allows other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to access untold amounts of that information.
Under current practice, the FBI can query and even read the U.S. side of that communication without a warrant. What’s more, victims won’t even know and have very few ways of finding out that their communications have been surveilled. EFF and other civil liberties advocates have been trying for years to know how data collected through Section 702 is used in domestic investigations and prosecutions.
Our advocacy to reform Section 702 has been consistent across administrations, including when the federal Intelligence Community was run by people with experience in the relevant agencies. In fact, the 2004 law creating the position of DNI – which coordinates America’s 18 spy agencies – requires those who hold it to have “extensive national security expertise.”
“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Because Trump named him acting DNI, Pulte isn’t subject to Senate confirmation. And under the Vacancies Act, Pulte could remain in the role for about seven months.
This is particularly concerning because of Pulte’s history of using private information held by the government as a political weapon. In his FHFA role, he has accused several of the President’s political foes and targets – including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – of mortgage fraud based on private data held by his agency.
All these targets and others have denied wrongdoing. A federal criminal complaint filed against James in Virginia imploded after a judge found prosecutor Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully appointed, and prosecutors twice failed to convince a grand jury to indict James. Pulte’s accusations against Schiff, Cook, and others have not led to criminal charges.
Pulte isn’t a qualified intelligence administrator. He does, however, seem to be unquestioningly loyal to President Trump and willing to use his position to attack and smear the President’s political foes. As acting DNI, Pulte would have access to every scrap of classified information the Intelligence Community holds, and under Section 702, that includes massive amounts of information about Americans.
Even lawmakers who are typically friendly to the intelligence community acknowledge that this is a disaster in the making. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, told NPR that Pulte has “no experience in the military, no experience in Congress, no experience in the intel community or law enforcement” and was chosen because he is “100% loyal to doing anything and everything President Trump demands.”
And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters “we don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director. Asked about fears that Pulte might pursue Trump’s political opponents, Thune said: “We need professionals there.”
Congress already has had trouble reauthorizing Section 702 as Freedom Caucus Republicans and many Democrats joined forces to demand reforms including the common-sense requirement that federal agencies get a probable cause warrant from a judge before searching any data involving Americans. Pulte’s appointment exemplifies why no administration should have the power granted by Section 702 without the independent judicial review required in seeking a warrant.
For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.
President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action.
But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.
At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner who was herself later the rental agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.”
Despite signing a mortgage that pledged he would live in each house, Trump listed both homes as rentals. Palm Beach Daily News via Newspapers.com. Redactions by ProPublica.
Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.
“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”
Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms, like lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property. Legal experts said that having more than one primary-residence mortgage can sometimes be legitimate, like when someone has to move for a new job, and other times can be caused by clerical error. Determining ill intent on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and the experts said lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer clients. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to buy the two Florida homes.)
But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that merely having two primary-residence mortgages is evidence of criminality.
Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has led the charge, said earlier this year: “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation.”
Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgages were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud.
In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”
The spokesperson added, “this is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” and said, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.”
The White House did not respond to questions about any other documents related to the transactions, such as loan applications, that could shed light on what Trump told the lender or if the lender made any exceptions for him.
At the time Trump bought the two Florida properties, he was dealing with the wreckage of high-profile failures at his casinos and hotels in the early 1990s. (He famously recounted seeing a panhandler on Fifth Avenue around this time and telling his companion: “You know, right now that man is worth $900 million more than I am.”) In December 1993, he married the model Marla Maples in an opulent ceremony at The Plaza Hotel. And in Florida, he was pushing local authorities to let him turn Mar-a-Lago, then a residence, into a private club.
Trump bought the two homes, which both sit on Woodbridge Road directly north of Mar-a-Lago, and got mortgages in quick succession in December 1993 and January 1994. The lender on both mortgages, one for $525,000 and one for $1,200,000, was Merrill Lynch.
Each of the mortgagedocuments signed by Trump contain the standard occupancy requirement — that he must make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agreed otherwise or there were extenuating circumstances.
But ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived in either of the properties. Legal documents and federal election records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself.
Trump’s real estate agent, who told the local press that the plan from the beginning was to rent out the two satellite homes, was quoted as saying, “Mr. Trump, in effect, is in a position to approve who his neighbors are.”
In the ensuing years, listings popped up in local newspapers advertising each of the homes for rent. At one point in 1997, the larger of the two homes, a 7-bedroom, 7-bathroom Mediterranean Revival mansion, was listed for $3,000 per day.
Even if Trump did violate the law with his two primary-residence mortgages in Florida, the loans have since been paid off and the mid-1990s is well outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property and attested that it too would be his principal residence. Obtained by ProPublica
A spokesperson for Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, did not answer questions about the Trump mortgages.
“It’s highly unlikely we would have original documents for a 32-year-old transaction, but generally in private client mortgages the terms of the transactions are based on the overall relationship,” the spokesperson said in a statement, “and the mortgages are not backed by or sold to any government sponsored entity.”
Trump’s two mortgages in Palm Beach bear similarities to the loans taken out by political rivals whom his administration has accused of fraud.
In October, federal prosecutors charged New York Attorney General Letitia James over her mortgage. James has been one of Trump’s top targets since she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022.
A central claim in the case the Trump Justice Department brought against her is that she purchased a house in Virginia, pledging to her lender that it would serve as her second home, then proceeded to use it as an investment property and rent it out. “This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” according to the indictment.
Trump’s Florida mortgage agreements appear to have made a more significant misrepresentation, as he claimed those homes would be his primary residence, not his secondary home as James did, before proceeding to rent them out.
James has denied the allegations against her, and the case was dismissed last month over procedural issues, though the Justice Department has been trying to reindict her.
The circumstances around Trump’s mortgages are also similar to the case his administration has made against Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Trump declared he was firing Cook earlier this year over her mortgages, as he has sought to bend the traditionally independent agency to his will and force it to lower interest rates. Cook, who denied wrongdoing, has sued to block the termination and continues to serve on the Fed board as that legal fight continues.
In a letter to Cook, Trump specifically noted that she signed two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other — just as records show he did in Florida.
“You signed one document attesting that a property in Michigan would be your primary residence for the next year. Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia stating that it would be your primary residence for the next year,” Trump wrote. “It is inconceivable that you were not aware of your first commitment when making the second.”
He called the loans potentially criminal and wrote, “at a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness.”
The Trump administration has made similar fraud allegations against other political enemies, including Democrats Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of whom have denied wrongdoing.
In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called multiple homes their primary residences in mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent did something similar. (The Cabinet members have all denied wrongdoing.)
Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head, has denied his investigations are politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican who’s committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to look at it,” he has said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’re going to look at it.”
Thus far, Pulte has not made any publicly known criminal referrals against Republicans. He did not respond to questions from ProPublica about Trump’s Florida mortgages.
The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.
President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator, and a state attorney general.
Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.
But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.
Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records.
In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.
A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences. “Fraud will not be tolerated in President Trump’s housing market,” Pulte has warned.
Real estate experts told ProPublica that, in its bid to wrest control of the historically independent Fed and go after political enemies, the Trump administration has mischaracterized mortgage rules. Its justification for launching criminal investigations, they said, could also apply to the Trump Cabinet members.
All three Cabinet members denied wrongdoing. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”
Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms than for a second home or an investment property. That includes better interest rates and the ability to borrow more money.
The idea is that borrowers are more likely to pay back — and less likely to default on — a loan attached to the home they actually live in. That makes those loans less risky for lenders. Interest rates are typically a quarter- to a half-point lower for primary mortgages, according to Pulte. On the low end, that could save around $75 each month over the life of a 30-year, 5% interest, half-million-dollar loan — or a total of around $25,000.
Standard mortgage documents commonly include an occupancy clause that requires the borrower to use the property as their principal residence for at least a year. They also include a section where borrowers can check a box when the mortgage is for a second home.
Misrepresenting occupancy status is not rare, according to a widely cited 2023 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In interviews, real estate lawyers said that mortgage lenders are typically well aware of their clients’ other loans and sometimes even encourage the primary-residence language for second homes.
They also pointed to a mundane reason that innocent mistakes are common: Homebuyers simply sign stacks of forms without reading them.
“Few consumers understand this issue, and if there is someone at fault here, it is likely the loan officer who likely advised them to sign up for this loan that obviously wasn’t for their primary residence,” said real estate lawyer Doug Miller. “Loan officers who are competing for business will often quote lower rates in order to get a customer’s business.”
Mortgage fraud is rarely prosecuted, according to real estate lawyers and federal sentencing data. Pulte has pointed to a case from 2016 in which a California woman was found guilty of obtaining multiple loans for condos that she falsely stated would be her primary residence. But that case had an added layer of fraud: The woman never intended to live in the homes. She was secretly being paid because she had good credit to act as a front for the true buyer of the properties, to whom they were later transferred. She later defaulted on the loans, causing more than half a million dollars in losses for the lenders.
Lawyers told ProPublica that determining ill intent would be key to prosecute. “Fraud requires the borrower to be aware that the borrower was making a false representation,” said Jon Goodman, an attorney focused on real estate at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and Greenstein.
But Pulte has framed the issue in black-and-white terms: “Your second home is not your primary home,” he warned in one recent post on X.
By that standard, Trump’s labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, could be in the wrong.
In her financial disclosure form, she listed two mortgages on personal residences, both obtained in 2021. Mortgage records show her home is in Happy Valley, a city near Portland where Chavez-DeRemer served as mayor before being elected to represent the area in the U.S. House.
She and her husband, Shawn DeRemer, who leads an anesthesia company in Portland, refinanced their longtime Oregon home in January 2021. Two months later, the couple bought a newly built house near a golf course in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
The pair had previously enjoyed vacationing in Arizona, according to news reports and social media posts. (In one incident that made the news, Chavez-DeRemer was briefly hospitalized after a golf cart accident on her way back from watching a Sonoran Desert sunset.)
The mortgage agreement for the Arizona property required them to occupy the home as their “principal residence” for at least a year, barring “extenuating circumstances” or the lender allowing them to violate the stipulation.
A spokesperson for Chavez-DeRemer said that the couple bought the Arizona home with the intent to retire there, but then Chavez-DeRemer decided to run for Congress representing her Oregon district and did not move.
“This is nothing more than a left-wing rag inventing a story just to attack the Trump Administration. It’s common for families to refinance then buy a home with future plans in mind — trying to spin that as some type of scandal is pure nonsense,” said spokesperson Courtney Parella.
In response to questions from ProPublica, a White House official said that although DeRemer opted to stay in Oregon, her husband “continued to move forward with the process of becoming” an Arizona resident. Political donation records list his home in Oregon as recently as late 2023.
Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, and his wife also have two primary-residence mortgages, obtained a few years apart.
In August 2021, the Duffys, who have nine children, purchased a large $2 million home in Far Hills, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, where Rachel Campos-Duffy works as a Fox News host.
They got a $1.6 million mortgage to purchase the property, and documents show it was a “principal residence” loan.
In February, after Duffy took the job in Trump’s cabinet, the couple bought another home, in Washington, D.C. Again, they got a principal-residence mortgage, this time for $1.76 million. Both Duffy and his wife are listed as borrowers on both mortgages, which came from the same bank.
It’s not clear where Sean Duffy lives most of the time, and a Department of Transportation spokesperson declined to answer questions about where Duffy and his wife each make their primary home. In late May, several months after they purchased the Washington home, “Fox & Friends Weekend” ran a segment in which Rachel Campos-Duffy cooked a “Make America Healthy Again” breakfast for host Steve Doocy. Sean Duffy and some of the couple’s children were also in the segment, and it was filmed in the New Jersey home.
Duffy’s spokesperson said in a statement that after being confirmed, “Sean purchased a home in Washington D.C. where he works full-time. The home in DC is not a rental, investment or vacation property. The same bank holds both mortgages and was fully informed of Secretary Duffy’s new employment location and need for a DC residence.”
A White House spokesperson said, “The bank, not the Secretary, determined and classified both mortgages as primary residences.”
Like the Duffys, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, and his wife also have two concurrent primary-residence mortgages.
One, obtained in 2007, is on a home in Shirley, New York, on Long Island, which Zeldin represented in Congress for several years. Last year, Zeldin and his wife obtained a second mortgage, for $712,500, on a property in Washington, D.C., a short walk from the EPA’s headquarters. Both are primary-residence mortgages.
An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that Zeldin’s primary residence was previously on Long Island but is now in Washington. The spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about where his wife lives. “Administrator Zeldin followed ALL steps to complete the move in accordance with all laws, rules, and contracts, notifying his mortgage company, insurance company, and local government,” the spokesperson said. “EVERY ‘I’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed 1000% by the book without exception.”
The dual mortgages identified by ProPublica among Trump’s cabinet secretaries resemble the loans obtained by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, whom Trump accused of mortgage fraud.
In May, Pulte referred Schiff to the Justice Department for taking out a primary-residence mortgage in Maryland, for a home he purchased in 2003 after being elected to the House, while also claiming his primary home was in Burbank, California, in the district he represented. Schiff and his wife refinanced the Maryland home several times as a primary residence, Pulte noted, until a 2020 refinance in which they reclassified it as a secondary home.
“Schiff appears to have falsified records in order to receive favorable loan terms,” Pulte concluded in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Representatives for Schiff called the allegations “transparently false” and said his lenders had “full knowledge of the senator’s year-round bicoastal work obligations” and “his use of two homes for that reason.” Schiff, according to his office, navigated the two mortgages in consultation with a House lawyer.
Pulte made similar allegations in a criminal referral about New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging she may have committed fraud by getting a primary-residence mortgage for a home in Virginia, even though her position required her to live in New York. Her lawyer has said James helped a family member buy the property and notified the mortgage broker at the time that it would not be her primary residence. James became one of Trump’s top political enemies after she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022. Representatives for James have called the fraud claims made against her politically motivated and false. (Pulte did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.)
Pulte’s most consequential allegations thus far were made against Cook, a Federal Reserve governor. Trump has been going after Fed Chair Jerome Powell for months for not lowering interest rates, even raising the specter that he would take the unprecedented step of attempting to fire the chair. Pulte’s criminal referral against Cook presented Trump with another avenue for bending the traditionally independent Fed to his will, securing a majority of the Fed’s board by firing Cook, a move that Cook has sued to block.
Pulte pointed to mortgage records that show that within just a couple of weeks, Cook signed primary-residence mortgages for homes in Michigan and Georgia. Legal experts said the close proximity was a red flag but that much was still unknown, including Cook’s intent and what her lenders were told. Pulte also flagged a third property, in Massachusetts, that Cook represented as a second home in mortgage documents but as an investment property in subsequent financial disclosures. Investment properties can be hit with higher mortgage rates than second homes.
“3 strikes and you’re out,” he posted on X.
Cook’s lawyers have denied that she committed mortgage fraud but have not provided a detailed explanation of the context for the various mortgages. They argued in court this week that her loans cannot be legally used as grounds to terminate her.
The Justice Department has begun investigating all three Trump foes singled out in Pulte’s referrals, according to news reports. The department has issued subpoenas in Cook’s case, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
ProPublica’s review of mortgage agreements by Trump cabinet officials shows that some made clear to lenders they were purchasing second homes.
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, got a mortgage for his home near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the agreement included a rider making it clear he would be using it as a second home.
