Trump Called This Fraud—While Doing It Himself

Summary

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Bulwark Takes – “Trump Called This Fraud—While Doing It Himself”

Date: December 9, 2025
Host: Tim Miller (The Bulwark)
Guest: Justin Elliott (ProPublica reporter)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into a recent investigative story by Justin Elliott (ProPublica), revealing that Donald Trump himself engaged in the exact type of mortgage activity he and his allies have aggressively labeled as “fraud” when accusing political opponents. The discussion unpacks the legal, political, and ethical dimensions of these allegations—especially highlighting the glaring hypocrisy at play, where standards applied to critics and rivals are ignored when similar actions are discovered within Trump’s own record.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Origin of the Investigation

[01:30–02:22]

• Justin Elliott explains the story’s beginnings: after Trump allies (notably Bill Pulte in the federal government) accused several political enemies of mortgage fraud, they began combing through public mortgage records.
• Elliott and his team thought to examine whether Trump or his own cabinet engaged in “fraud” by their own definitions.

“This is a story about Trump committing what Trump describes as fraud. And I think that's, that's an important distinction.” – Justin Elliott [02:22]

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2. What is ‘Principal Residence Mortgage Fraud’?

[03:39–05:36]

• Most standard U.S. mortgages contain a clause requiring the property to be used as the buyer’s “principal residence” within 60 days and maintained as such for at least a year.
• Lenders offer slightly better rates for these mortgages, seeing owner-occupied homes as less risky.
• Trump and Bill Pulte have charged critics with fraud for having two simultaneous “principal residence” mortgages, claiming it as evidence of deception.

“If you simultaneously have two of these mortgages where you signed this document that said the property in question would be your principal residence, then that is...on its own grounds for a criminal referral and criminal investigation, of course.” – Justin Elliott [06:26]

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3. Why the Fraud Allegations Don’t Hold Water Legally

[06:36–07:58]

• Mortgage lawyers say the Pulte/Trump standard is flawed; there are many legitimate reasons a person might temporarily hold two “principal residence” mortgages (such as relocation for a new job before selling the old home).
• Many public mortgage documents provide only a partial picture.

“There are non-public documents that would fundamentally change the understanding of what the lender knew.” – Justin Elliott [08:23]

• In Lisa Cook’s case (Fed Governor), additional, non-public documents showed she’d told the lender about her homes being used as vacation properties.

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4. Trump’s Personal Hypocrisy

[09:46–10:14]

• Trump signed two “principal residence” mortgages in late 1993 and early 1994—seven weeks apart—on homes next to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
• Evidence (rental listings, agent testimony) indicates Trump never lived in these homes as a primary residence; he always rented them out.

“She said, you know, we quote her on the record in the story saying, these were rentals from the beginning. Trump never lived there. And so this easily exceeds the Trump Pulte standard for criminal mortgage fraud.” – Justin Elliott [10:09]

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5. The Impracticality of Prosecution (and the Politics)

[12:02–14:33]

• Tim Miller leans into the hypocrisy, mock-calling for Trump’s prosecution under his own standards:

“As you said, he signed...seven weeks apart...and the real estate agent said that he never lived there...seems to me like Donald Trump, by his own...standard, broke the law here.” – Tim Miller [12:07]

• Elliott counters: real mortgage fraud cases are rare and require actual intent to deceive the lender—often not established by public documents alone.
• The original lender (Merrill Lynch) no longer exists; no additional documentation about Trump’s intentions has surfaced.

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6. Selective Enforcement and Hypocrisy

[14:33–16:45]

• Bill Pulte and allies have publicly promised to pursue anyone (Republican or Democrat) over such mortgage discrepancies, but thus far, only political rivals (primarily Democrats—Lisa Cook, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell) have been targeted by aggressive actions.
• ProPublica found four Trump cabinet members, plus Trump himself, with similar mortgage arrangements.

“But at this point it has universally...been about Democrats. We report, as I mentioned earlier, we reported three Trump Cabinet members had this. Trump himself has it.” – Justin Elliott [15:25]

• Many politicians (due to multiple homes and job-related moves) likely have similar mortgage histories, making the selective prosecutions clearly political.

“It didn't take us that long to find three cabinet members who had this...if somebody set out to look at members of Congress who...are spending time in D.C. and also in their home districts, you would probably find dozens of examples.” – Justin Elliott [16:03]

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7. The Story’s Takeaway

[16:45–17:23]

• The main point: Trump and his administration weaponize technicalities that are common (and legally benign) as a partisan bludgeon, while ignoring or excusing the same conduct by themselves and their allies.

“Their prosecutions of the Democrats are silly and that they are also guilty of the things they accuse them of. It's kind of, that's really what it comes down to.” – Tim Miller [16:45]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [02:22] Justin Elliott: “This is a story about Trump committing what Trump describes as fraud. And I think that's, that's an important distinction.”
• [06:26] Justin Elliott: “If you simultaneously have two of these mortgages...that is...on its own grounds for a criminal referral and criminal investigation, of course.”
• [10:09] Justin Elliott: “These were rentals from the beginning. Trump never lived there. And so this easily exceeds the Trump Pulte standard for criminal mortgage fraud.”
• [12:07] Tim Miller: “Seems to me like Donald Trump, by his own...standard, broke the law here and that we should have a referral to an independent Justice Department.”
• [16:03] Justin Elliott: “It didn’t take us that long to find three cabinet members who had this...you would probably find dozens of examples.”
• [16:45] Tim Miller: “Their prosecutions of the Democrats are silly and that they are also guilty of the things they accuse them of.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:30] – Intro to Justin Elliott and the story’s background
• [02:22] – Defining the “fraud” as Trump/Team Trump describes it
• [05:36] – How “principal residence” clauses work
• [09:46] – Trump’s own mortgage documents: the specifics
• [12:02] – Discussion on intent, practicality and real world prosecution challenges
• [14:33] – Selective enforcement and the political nature of these prosecutions
• [16:03] – How common the “violation” really is among politicians
• [16:45] – Final takeaway: hypocrisy and weaponization of technicalities

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Conclusion

The episode offers a detailed, clear-eyed examination of a hypocrisy at the heart of recent “mortgage fraud” attacks by Trump and his associates. They have accused political enemies of wrongdoing, calling for criminal referrals for actions that, by their standards, Trump himself clearly committed—and that are, in fact, extremely common (and legally banal) among property owners and politicians. The episode highlights both the absurdity and danger of selective, bad-faith legal attacks in today’s political landscape.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

Hey everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark. I am here with Justin Elliott of ProPublica who had a piece out today that caught my eye. It's titled Trump's own mortgages match his description of mortgage fraud records reveal. Shocker. I'm shocked to hear this. But for folks who, you know, have been following this, you know, Donald Trump has had Bill Pulte in the government going after, you know, going through with a fine tune tooth comb through the mortgage papers of everybody he hates and all of his political enemies looking for opportunities. And it turns out maybe they should have been looking inside the house. So, Justin, thanks for coming on.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having Me.

[B]

Give us a rundown of how you got to this story. I guess when you saw Bill Pulte going after Lisa Cook and Letitia James, just figured you'd go into the Trump records or what was the origin here?

[D]

Yeah, I mean, so the first thing is to be clear, and I hate to argue against the sexiness of my own story, but this is a story that is not about us thinking that Trump actually committed fraud. It's a story about Trump committing what Trump describes as fraud. And I think that's, that's an important distinction. So basically, when Bill Pulte, you know, the FHFA had, several months ago, started.

Throwing around allegations of mortgage fraud against various of, you know, Trump's political enemies, my colleagues and I, you know, we've looked at mortgage documents there. There are certain mortgage documents that you can get in the public domain at, like the county clerk's office, typically. And so we decided to start looking first actually at some Trump Cabinet members. We did an earlier story a few months ago where we found that several Trump Cabinet members, including Sean Duffy and others, also had two of these so called principal residence mortgages, which, which Trump and Bill Pulte have been saying is kind of like a PR evidence of fraud. And so this story today about President Trump having two of these mortgages came out of that reporting. And, you know, can you explain to.

[B]

Me how this works as a, as a person with a single mortgage?

Why is this even plausibly fraud? Like, what exactly would be the potential issue here?

[D]

Yeah, no, I'm also a person with single mortgage. I was sort of nervously looking at my mortgage papers before publishing these stories to make sure I didn't mess anything up. But, you know, so basically it turns out that when you get a mortgage, there's, there's kind of like a standard boilerplate document that gets filed publicly, typically. And it's called the, it's like a Fannie and Freddie Standard Mortgage Uniform Instrument, they call it. And that document has like, you know, like 15 or 20.

I guess they technically call them covenants. Basically things you're agreeing to think you're, you sign the bottom of this as the borrower. And one of those things says occupancy. And it says, you know, within 60 days of signing this, you are agreeing to make this property. Your, the term they use is principal residence for at least a year. And so like, why does this matter? Why does this exist from the perspective of the lender? You are a less risky borrower on a house that you're actually living in. Versus let's say a vacation home. Or the kind of worst category is just like an investment property you're renting out. And it sort of intuitively makes sense that if you, you know, fell upon hard times, you would kind of maybe like sell your other assets before defaulting on your actual home loan of the home that you were living in. But a vacation home or a rental property, maybe you'd let it go. So that's like the kind of fundamental idea.

So if you look at my mortgage, if you look at these Trump mortgages we wrote about today, probably if you look at your mortgage, you probably signed a thing that said you were agreeing to make this your principal residence. And so what's been going on here.

[B]

Is that, so what do I get out of that? What do I get out?

[D]

Like, you probably get a slightly better interest rate, which obviously over the course of a 30 year mortgage can actually be a somewhat big deal. We're not talking about like a full percentage point. We might be talking about like a few tenths of a point. I mean, it depends, but it's not nothing. So, like, it does, it does help you. So from the beginning of this, the kind of game that Bill Pulte has been playing and Trump, and to be clear, I've been talking to a lot of mortgage lawyers and they say that what Trump and Bill Pulte, the kind of standard of mortgage fraud that they've been presenting is completely flawed and wrong. But what they have been saying is that if you simultaneously have two of these mortgages where you signed this document that said the property in question would be your principal resident residents, then that is according to Bill Pulte, on its own grounds for a criminal referral and criminal investigation, of course. And this isn't just something that they're just sort of spouting off. I mean, this was the grounds for firing Lisa Cook, the Fed Governor, Tish James, the New York AG was indicted over something related to this. Each of the fact patterns is a little bit different. So the reason to be clear that this is not, according to the actual mortgage law experts, this is not evidence on its own that you have committed a crime, is that there's all kinds of legitimate reasons why you might have two of these.

The kind of easiest one to understand is you might buy a house, get a mortgage and then actually live in it. And then a couple of years later, you get a new job in another city, you move to the other city, you get a new, a second home with a mortgage, you keep the first one and now suddenly, if I, you know, some reporter goes looking, they're going to find that you have two of these mortgages that you signed that say that it'll be your principal residence. The other big problem is that the documents that the administration has been relying on and the documents that we've been citing, these are the documents that you can get publicly again. Like the documents that we wrote about today were about these two properties that Trump bought down in Palm beach next to Mar a Lago. And it was quite easy to get them. I had to like, you know, navigate the Palm beach clerk, county clerk, don't sell yourself short.

[B]

I couldn't have done it. Yeah, I don't know how to get onto those websites.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, in fairness to me, it was like, it was like a 20 year old website. So it took, it took a few tries, but you can get these. Now if you've ever gotten a mortgage, you know that you have to like sit in a room and sign documents for like an hour. There's like a giant stack of documents. What actually gets recorded in the public domain in these like county clerk offices is like, you know, 5% of what you signed. And so there's, there's plenty of cases. And this turned out to be the case with Lisa Cook where there are non public documents that would fundamentally change the understanding of what the lender knew. Like, so, like in the Lisa Cook case, for example, it came out later, her lawyers produce these documents where it seems like she did tell one of the lenders that, that one of the homes in question, there was going to be a vacation home. So, but to get to what we reported here, Trump and Pulte repeatedly, very clearly, including in the letter firing Lisa Cook, said that if you have two of these primary residence mortgages, and especially if you got them in quick succession, then you should be criminally referred to the Justice Department. Trump fired Lisa Cook for that. And we found that Trump, in 1993, December 93 and January 94, seven weeks apart, got two of these primary residence mortgages on two properties, these two quite nice homes that are directly next to Mar a Lago. And there's overwhelming evidence that he never, not only did he not make these homes his principal residence, he never actually lived in them as far as we could tell. We found extensive rental listings at the time. I actually called the real estate agent whose name was on one of the rental listings from the 90s, and she's still around. Longtime friend of the Trump family, longtime Palm beach real estate agent. She said, you know, we Quote her on the record in the story saying, these were rentals from the beginning. Trump never lived there. And so this easily exceeds the Trump Pulte standard for criminal mortgage fraud.

[E]

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[B]

Justin, I know that you are, you know, a reporter. You're doing, it's good. You're being judicious, you know, with your potential caveats here. I'm a simple YouTube performer now and I'm just looking at your story and I think, I just think we should lock him up.

None of those caveats you gave are relevant here. I mean, like, as you said, he signed, he's just seven weeks apart. He sent two different mortgages. You said that the real estate agent said that he never lived there. He, you know, had hired an expensive New York design firm this year. It's in the Miami Herald to dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually. Like that's what they said to the, to the newspaper back at the time. So it seems to me like Donald Trump, by his own, you know, using his own standard, broke the law here and that we should have a referral to an independent Justice Department.

[D]

So absolutely, by his own standard, this is grounds for a criminal referral. But I will, however, defend Trump here. So, you know, we don't know the full story here because, you know, we went to the lender, it was Merrill Lynch. Merrill lynch doesn't even exist as a standalone company anymore. It was bought by bank of America, you know, during the financial crisis. They said they couldn't find any files about this transaction, which 30 years ago. But it is very possible that at the time, Merrill lynch, which was the lender on both of these mortgages, had some kind of communication with Trump, whether memorialized in writing or not, in which Trump made clear to them that he was not actually going to live in these properties, that he was going to rent them out or, you know, use them as kind of satellite properties for Mar A Lago. And what the actual kind of sober minded mortgage lawyers we've been talking to say is actually mounting a successful mortgage fraud prosecution, which is incredibly rare by the way, requires proving like other types of fraud. You know, you need to prove like ill intent on the part of the borrower, like that they were intending to deceive the lender and maybe get a little bit of a better rate by deceiving them. And so is very possible that we do not have the full record on this transaction because we're just drawing from what's in the public record. So I do not counterpoint was you.

[B]

You'Re talking to very serious mortgage attorneys. I am looking at the public record this of this administration where basically the only two crimes that they're interested prosecuting are, are not being fully truthful on mortgage applications and immigration issues. And I think that like this should probably be looked into given those are the two most serious crimes that the Trump administration has identified are facing the country.

[D]

Right. I mean, Bill Pulte has said repeatedly that, I mean, not only has, not only has he said that having two of these mortgages on its own is grounds for criminal referral. He's described this as a black and white issue that's not complicated, which is not true according to all of the experts, but he has also said that they're going to look at anyone Republican or Democrat, who's done this. You know, we went to Bill Pulte for this story, laid out the facts and the documents, or we sent the documents to the White House. And Pulte did not respond at this point. You know, they've gone after Tish James, Lisa Cook, talking about going after Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, I believe, again, all of these situations have slightly distinct fact patterns, but at this point it has universally the ones that have become public are about Democrats. We report, as I mentioned earlier, we reported three Trump Cabinet members had this. Trump himself has it. Bloomberg reported Scott Besant did it.

So including Trump, that's four cabinet members plus the president did it was the.

[B]

Farmer, Scott essence primary. Was his farm his primary residence, do you know?

[D]

I believe not. I believe one was on Cape Cod. He's a very, he's a quite wealthy man. He has many properties.

[B]

I'm sorry, he's telling us this weekend he was a farmer again. So it's hard for me to understand how he could have multiple primary residences and none of them be his farm.

[D]

That seems, don't seem to work, I think, I mean, frankly, when we started looking into this, it didn't. And like, I don't want to shortchange our skills as investigative reporters, but it didn't take us that long to find three cabinet members who had this. I mean, it took a little bit of shoe leather. I think one of my colleagues had to go to some like county office in Oregon and get the paper records for the labor secretary. But I think if somebody set out to look at members of Congress who, you know, kind of by their nature are spending time in D.C. and also in their home districts, you would probably find dozens of examples. And we just haven't bothered because it's like I think we've made the point.

[B]

Made the point that their prosecutions of the Democrats are silly and that they are also guilty of the things they accuse them of. It's kind of, that's really what it comes down to.

[D]

I mean, it's a hypocrisy story, I think. But it's not just Trump posting. I mean, Tish James was indicted over something related to this. And the latest reporting is that last week a grand jury declined to re indict her. But the reporting based on blind, you know, blind quotes is that they're going to keep trying. So I don't think, I don't think we've heard the end of the mortgage fraud issue. Although I'm hoping that this is the last time I have to actually look at these documents.

[B]

I'm hoping that for you as well, Justin Elliott, I appreciate your time on this. Yeah, I'm sad you didn't get to go down to Palm Beach. You might have to look through the records in person. We'll see if anyone, if any other Democrats get indicted. I'll tell your bosses you should. You should get that trip.

[D]

All right, brother. Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

Everybody subscribe to the feed. We'll be talking to y' all soon.

[C]

Sat.