Transcript
A (0:00)
The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US Based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
B (0:29)
Well, Donald Trump and mortgage fraud just seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Especially when you live in a glass house like Donald Trump and you accuse your political rivals and critics of committing mortgage fraud, like, oh, taking out two loans, claiming both are your primary residence in order to get favorable mortgage loan treatment, or saying that you're not going to rent out your home for investment purposes. You know, things like that. And Donald Trump used those attacks to go after Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve to try to get her fired. That's been blocked for now by the United States Supreme Court, but we'll see for how long. Claiming that that's crooked and criminal and should be made there should be a criminal prosecution referral because she took out two loans from the same lender on two different properties and checked the box for primary residence. And lo and behold, she claims that. He claims that Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, another major political rival of his, who successfully obtained a former $400 million fraud judgment against him for mortgage fraud, that she committed mortgage fraud by saving $50 a month. $50 a month, everybody. She checked a box that said she wasn't going to rent the house out to anybody and she let some of her family stay there. Oh, the crimes that are being committed. And then points to people like Adam Schiff, who says he has a couple of, a couple of properties that he shouldn't own, both listed as his primary residence. And lo and behold, that got a lot of investigative reporters thinking, huh? Wonder if Donald Trump or anybody in his administration have done the exact same thing. And ProPublica has been on the case from day one. About a month or so ago, I reported that ProPublica had found that at least 20% of Donald Trump's cabinet, including his Treasury Secretary, his head of the Department of Labor, and the head of the Transportation Department, all had exactly the same types of double primary residence mortgage documents, meaning that banks let them check the box for primary to give them a slightly lower mortgage rate. And they took advantage of it because, frankly, it's not a crime. It's not a crime if the banks aren't being defrauded, if they encourage you to check the box, if they want to give you the lower interest rate, that's between the mortgage lender, the banker, his underwriter at the bank and his God. I mean, if there was any, if there was any miscommunication on that issue. So that was the first reporting, but now we got brand new reporting that ties it directly to Donald Trump. See, back in 1993 and 1994 when Donald Trump was trying to figure out whether he could live at Mar A Lago year round as a residence and, and hadn't gotten that approved yet because it was a club and he was still living in New York, crushed under the weight of 7 or $800 million worth of bankruptcy debt. Oh yes. He decided to buy a couple of pieces of property in Palm beach adjacent to or near Mar A Lago, one for about $500,000 mortgage and the other for about a million two. And he claimed in those mortgage documents, according to ProPublica, who got a copy of them from the Merrill lynch bank documents, he claimed that both were gonna be his primary residences, that he was gonna relocate within the next six months and he was gonna live in both houses as his primary residence. You see the problem already. First of all, he never relocated to Florida, except in 2007, he stayed in New York or actually to 2019 became his permanent residence. He always split time between New York, which was his residence, and Florida. But he checked the box for this primary residence for two pieces of property. He never lived in either piece of property, according to a real estate agent who helped rent out the properties. Instead he always rented them out at 2 and $3,000 a day to people that wanted to stay in these investments properties. So Donald Trump, seeing these facts about somebody else would say they are quoting him, this is deceitful and criminal and crooked. Bill Pulte, who says the Nepo baby that runs Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac, who went after on behalf of Donald Trump, Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve, Letitia James, New York Attorney General Adam Schiff, all for quote, unquote, mortgage fraud. He said about, for instance, about this type of double primary residence box, checking the way that Donald Trump did it, that that should subject the person to a, it's a crime and there should be a criminal prosecution referral. And then he made a prosecution referral to the Department of Justice. Now, Bill Pulte is interesting because even his own parents have committed what he refers to as mortgage fraud because they claimed a property in Michigan as their primary residence when they really lived in Palm Beach County, Florida the whole time. Now the Michigan tax collector has gotten back the money for that quote unquote fraud by Bill Pulte's own parents.