This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 18 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Thursday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for permission to immediately fire the only Black woman serving on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, Lisa Cook. It was the latest step in Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to gain control of the Fed and run the country’s monetary policy in violation of the entire structure of the independent central bank.
It does seem a little odd that three people Trump has it out for just all happened to commit the same infraction, doesn’t it?
Trump claims he can fire Cook for cause. The cause, he says, is alleged mortgage fraud. The White House claims that in 2021, Cook took out a mortgage on a condo in Atlanta, and she told the lender it would be her primary residence when she already had a primary home in Michigan.
If those allegations sound familiar, it is because Cook isn’t alone. The administration has raised similar allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats.
It does seem a little odd that three people Trump has it out for all just happened to commit the same infraction, doesn’t it?
So where are all these allegations of mortgage fraud coming from? From one man, it turns out. His name is Bill Pulte. He is the heir to a construction empire and a major Trump donor, who regularly blasts out pro-MAGA messages to his 3 million X followers.
Pulte was handpicked by Trump to run the Federal Housing Finance Authority. His job is basically to oversee U.S. mortgage markets, jump-start home sales and improve housing affordability. But he also has access to mortgage documents from millions of American homeowners — and it sure seems that he has been searching them for dirt the administration can use against its adversaries.
Pulte has referred Schiff and James to the Justice Department for prosecution, and in the case of Cook, he’s ginned up a pretext for her illegal firing.
This is so far beyond the pale — the political head of an agency seemingly digging through government files for dirt — that even the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal has blasted Pulte’s work as government weaponization, writing it was “an ominous turn in political lawfare” and “nasty business.”
But Pulte’s accusations against Cook are not just government overreach. They are also bunk. Last week, NBC News reviewed financial documents that appear to contradict the Trump administration’s claims and show that Cook has consistently declared her Atlanta condo as a second home. The paperwork Pulte cited for his claims was likely an oversight that brought Cook no special benefits.
Senior law enforcement officials have also told NBC News that the mortgage fraud investigation into James is at a standstill “because federal agents and prosecutors don’t believe they have enough evidence to get a conviction if the case were to go to trial.”
Like Cook, James has said the allegations stem from one document that erroneously lists a second home as her primary residence, and, as with Cook, the rest of the loan documents accurately say the home would not be James’ primary residence.
Pulte’s accusations have turned out to be so overblown that it appears even Republicans are souring on him and his allegations. According to Politico, at a private dinner in Washington last week, Pulte got into a shouting match with Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent over rumors that Pulte was trashing Bessent to the president. Bessent reportedly told Pulte, “I’m gonna punch you in your f—ing face.” Neither Pulte nor Bessent commented on the incident when Politico asked them about it. On top of that, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that mortgage documents show Bessent once made contradictory declarations on his mortgage declaration, just like Cook. Experts tell Bloomberg that, as with Cook’s mortgage, there’s no sign of wrongdoing on Bessent’s part, “Rather, his case demonstrates that an incongruity in home-loan filings isn’t necessarily proof of fraud.” Lawyers for Bessent echoed that sentiment, telling Bloomberg, “There was absolutely nothing improper about Mr. Bessent’s loan applications with which he was minimally involved.” You see, a real kind of fraud in this realm would be if you owned homes in two states and you falsely claimed both as your primary residence, and then you took a tax break for residents on both houses. Pulte’s accusations have turned out to be so overblown that it appears even Republicans are souring on him and his allegations. That does happen. In fact, Pulte’s parents reportedly did just that. According to records reviewed by Reuters, “Mark and Julie Pulte, the father and stepmother of Bill Pulte … since 2020 have claimed so-called ‘homestead exemptions’ for residences in wealthy neighborhoods in both Michigan and Florida.” When Reuters brought the issue to a Michigan tax official’s attention, he told them that “Revised tax bills will be issued to the Pultes, including all applicable penalty and interest.” So Trump now wants the Supreme Court to fire the Fed board’s only Black woman for mortgage fraud that she does not appear to have committed, but that was alleged by a Trump appointee with access to everyone’s mortgage records — a Trump appointee who is using his time in public service to hunt for evidence of misdeeds by Trump’s political enemies, while his family reportedly benefits from the same dubious housing claims. The entire affair is exactly as preposterously trumped up as you thought it was.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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