The real fraud here is the misuse of confidential government data.View this email in your browser [link removed]

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****AUGUST 21, 2025****

**On the

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Lost in the crisis over Texas state lawmakers’ redistricting overreach is another contentious issue: the regulation of hemp-derived THC products.

**BY CHARLIE MCGILL** [link removed]

****Kuttner on TAP****

**Trump’s hit job against Fed governor Lisa Cook**

**The real fraud here is the misuse of confidential government data.**

Trump and his cronies are attempting a police state hit job on one of the Federal Reserve governors, Lisa Cook, in a clumsy attempt to force her resignation. If Trump can push her out and replace Cook with a loyalist, his allies will total four seats on the seven-member Fed Board of Governors.

On Wednesday, Bill Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, put out a post on social media alleging that Cook had submitted fraudulent information on two mortgage applications four years ago. Pulte then said that he was making a criminal referral to the Justice Department. In a well-choreographed play, Trump then called for Cook’s resignation and said that if she didn’t resign he would fire her, something he lacks the authority to do.

**Pulte alleges, in a post on social media** [link removed], that Cook, a former economics professor at the University of Michigan appointed to the Fed by Joe Biden, took out two mortgages in 2021, one in Michigan and the other in Georgia. According to Pulte, she described both as her principal residence.

Even if true, this hardly rises to the level of serious fraud, and it is hard to imagine a jury convicting. Prosecutions for this sort of misstatement are extremely rare unless they are part of a larger material fraud. Young people who get part of the down payment from parents routinely check the box that says none of the down payment is borrowed.

The more important question is where Pulte got this information. The information in mortgage applications is confidential. Pulte presumably had access to it only because he heads an agency that regulates the secondary mortgage market. He or his minions must have gone on a fishing expedition to see what they could get on selected targets.

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Trump’s administration is pursuing similar hit jobs against two other political adversaries, also based on confidential information involving alleged mortgage fraud. The Justice Department has authorized prosecutions of California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. A lawyer for Schiff has called the allegations “transparently false.” James has termed the witch hunt “weaponization of the justice system.” It goes without saying that Trump has committed far more serious crimes.

If Trump’s administration can use confidential information from mortgage applications to look for technical violations to selectively prosecute political adversaries, what is to stop Trump and his allies from alleging insurance fraud by trolling health insurance claims? The health insurance system has become so complicated that there is not a patient anywhere who has not inadvertently signed something that was technically wrong.

This is police state stuff, pure and simple. Any American can be targeted.

**Cook, to her credit, has said she is not leaving** [link removed]. “I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” Cook said. “I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.”

Trump has been pressuring the Fed to cut interest rates, so far to no avail. If the Fed does cut rates in September, it will be because Fed officials conclude that the risk of recession now outweighs the risk of inflation, not because of Trump’s demands.

The Fed is one of the few government agencies that Trump doesn’t yet control, though he will have a working majority after Chairman Jay Powell’s term expires next May. The trumped-up case against Cook is beyond shameful, even by Trump’s standards.

**~ ROBERT KUTTNER**

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