Photo: Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Throughout his second term, the Trump administration has attempted to pursue legal action against many of the president’s perceived political enemies, including levying allegations of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. A new report suggests that Donald Trump is guilty of the same alleged crimes.

According to ProPublica, Trump purchased two Florida homes in the 1990s and listed them as his primary residence despite not living in either — which is similar to what administration officials accused Cook of:

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. …

“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.

Records from the time list Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan as Trump’s primary residence and there’s no indication that he lived in either of the Florida homes, ProPublica reports. The mortgage loans have since been paid off.

The White House’s fixation on mortgage fraud allegations stem from Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has led the undertaking. In August, Trump announced that he was firing Cook from her role on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, citing a pair of criminal referrals from Pulte which alleged that Cook purchased a property in both Michigan and Georgia within a two week span and claimed both as her primary residence. Cook has denied the claims against her and has challenged her removal from the board.

Pulte has also pursued claims against James, alleging the attorney general committed mortgage fraud in connection to a property in Virginia and another in New York by falsifying records in order to “meet certain lending requirements and receive favorable loan terms.” The referral ultimately led to a federal indictment revolving around a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia with prosecutors alleging that James sought a mortgage loan for the property intended as a second residence, but later used it as a rental property. The federal government’s indictment against James was ultimately dismissed after a federal judge ruled that interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan had been improperly appointed to the role, finding in favor of a challenge from James’s legal team.

In addition to Cook and James, Pulte has also conducted investigations into Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell, probing for alleged instances of mortgage fraud. But Pulte’s actions have also begun to come under scrutiny. Politico reports that the U.S. Government Accountability Office will take on a request from Senate Democrats to investigate criminal referrals from Pulte, saying the agency will “review matters relating to recent actions undertaken at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), to determine whether the agency and its employees misused federal authority and resources.”

More politics

I Wanted to Surprise My Family on Thanksgiving. ICE Deported Me Instead.How Do You Sell a War to Isolationists? Make It ‘America First.’The Updated Epstein List: Who Is Named in All of the Files?

From Intelligencer - Daily News, Politics, Business, and Tech via this RSS feed