President Trump’s attacks on Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Board governor battling in the courts to keep her job, are part of a growing effort to undermine his perceived political rivals by accusing them of an obscure type of mortgage fraud.
But the crime Mr. Trump alleges, which involves claiming falsely that a second home or rental property is a principal residence in hopes of obtaining more favorable financial terms, is often hard to prove and rarely prosecuted, according to mortgage experts and criminal defense attorneys.
A New York Times review of mortgage documents connected to more than 80 senior government officials, including cabinet members, Mr. Trump’s staff, Supreme Court justices and House and Senate leaders from both parties, found only a handful of examples in which officials declared two primary residences. Those examples are not exact parallels to Ms. Cook’s case, and each of those officials offered an explanation for the circumstances — or documents — showing they acted properly. But they show how mortgage cases can become clouded or confusing because of paperwork errors, extenuating circumstances or other factors.
Primary-residence borrowers are typically required to move into their properties within 60 days of the mortgage’s issuance and to stay there for at least 12 months, unless prompted to move by a life situation — which could be any number of factors, from a new job to a divorce, according to mortgage documents, real-estate lawyers and other industry experts.
Most of the public officials identified by the Times review as having potentially violated those terms have pointed out that paperwork errors or other mitigating circumstances accounted for the appearance that they had obtained a primary-residence loan whose occupancy terms they did not honor. Many say that, in fact, their intentions had been clearly communicated all along— mirroring an argument made by Ms. Cook’s lawyers.
Mr. Trump has sought to justify his attempts to fire Ms. Cook from the Federal Reserve Board — and the powerful central bank committee that sets domestic interest rates, which he wants to lower — by claiming that she took out primary home loans on a pair of properties in different states almost simultaneously, in an attempt to game the system by locking in lower mortgage rates.
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The post Deception? Conflicting Paperwork? Clerical Error? How a Politician’s Mortgages Can Get Muddy appeared first on New York Times.
