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Records Shows That Trump, By His Own Definition, Is Guilty of Mortgage Fraud
“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said one mortgage law expert.
Dec 08, 2025
As US President Donald Trump targets political opponents with dubious allegations of mortgage fraud, an investigation published Monday revealed the Republican leader once did the same thing as a senior official he is trying to fire.
In an August letter, Trump announced his termination of Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—for alleged fraud, accusing her of signing two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other.
Cook, who denies any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime and has filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's attempt to fire her. In October, the US Supreme Court declined to immediately remove Cook and agreed to hear oral arguments on the case in January.
Trump called Cook's actions "deceitful and potentially criminal." However, ProPublica reviewed records showing that Trump "did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of."
Trump committed mortgage fraud, according to Trump.Somehow I doubt his DOJ will go after him the way he instructed his DOJ to go after his political enemies over this.Every Republican accusation is a confession.
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— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 5:47 AM
According to the publication:
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent—exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud...
Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.
"Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance, told ProPublica. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, responded to ProPublica's analysis in a statement slamming "Trump's mortgage fraud witch hunt."
"The cruel and lawless hypocrisy of Donald Trump using the levers of government to dig up so-called mortgage fraud on his perceived political opponents, while doing the very same, is blatant," Gilbert said in a statement.
A federal judge recently dismissed the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) criminal case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was charged with bank fraud and false statements regarding a property in Virginia. Critics called the charges against James—who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial crimes—baseless and politically motivated. A federal grand jury subsequently rejected another administration attempt to indict James.
“The administration has used the idea of claiming a home as your primary residence without residing there to justify DOJ takedowns of Lisa Cook, Tish James, and more," Gilbert added. "If this is how they really feel, and the ProPublica reporting is accurate, then Donald Trump should be next in the DOJ crosshairs.”
ProPublica said that Trump hung up on one of its reporters who asked about similarities between his Florida mortgages and those of people targeted by his administration.
“President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender," a White House spokesperson subsequently told the outlet. "There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”
“President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law," the spokesperson falsely added.
Trump has accused other political foes, including US Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell—both California Democrats who played key roles in both of the president's House impeachments—of similar fraud. Swalwell is currently under formal criminal investigation. Both lawmakers deny the allegations.
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North Carolina GOP Official Uses 'Connections With the Trump Admin' to Threaten ProPublica Journalist
“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump administration,” said the North Carolina GOP's communications director. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”
Oct 30, 2025
Republican Party officials are now using their "connections" to the Trump administration to threaten journalists into dropping critical coverage.
That's what Doug Bock Clark, a reporter for ProPublica, recently discovered as he worked on a feature-length story on the rise of Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina's Supreme Court, who has become one of the most quietly influential jurists in the nation.
The piece published Thursday examines how Newby, a born-again Christian who was elected to the bench in 2004, believes he was called by God to exact what he calls "biblical justice."
Over the past two decades, Clark wrote that Newby has "turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power" and "driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state."
Newby's most significant contribution has been the landmark decision that legalized partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, a state that had long had some of the strongest laws in the country against partisan redistricting.
The change led the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to draw up wildly slanted maps that netted the GOP an additional six seats in the US House of Representatives in 2024, handing the party a national trifecta at the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term, which has allowed him to wield extraordinary power almost totally free of oversight from Congress.
It's just one of the ways, Clark said, that "Newby has provided a blueprint for conservatives to seize most of the nation’s state supreme courts, which have increasingly become the final word on abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights."
The report drew from more than 70 interviews with those who know Newby professionally and personally. But he was unable to get in contact with Newby himself.
"I reached out to Newby multiple times during the course of my reporting and was even escorted out of a judicial conference while trying to interview him," Clark wrote on social media. "The court’s communications director and media team also didn’t respond to detailed questions."
When Clark attempted to contact Newby's daughter for comment, he instead received an ominous message from that aforementioned communications director, Matt Mercer.
Mercer ranted that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”
He continued: “I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump administration, and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”
As Clark pointed out, "He bolded and underlined 'strongly,' in case we missed his point."
After the story, which made note of Mercer's threat, was published, Mercer then doubled down on social media, urging Trump to "feed ProPublica to the USAID wood chipper," referencing the president's near-total stripping of funds from the foreign aid agency.
Trump has issued an executive order slashing federal funds for media organizations supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, like NPR and PBS, in response to critical coverage of his administration. But it's not entirely clear how he would actually go about doing such a thing to ProPublica, which does not receive government dollars but instead subsists on private grants and donations.
At any rate, Mercer's messages were widely perceived as a not-so-veiled attempt to coerce ProPublica into ceasing its inquiries.
Travis Fain, a freelance reporter who previously worked for Raleigh's NBC News affiliate, WRAL, expressed disbelief at Mercer's belligerence on social media: "Well, there you go," he said. "The North Carolina Republican Party officially threatens journalists now."
Wiley Nickel, the former Democratic US House representative for North Carolina's 13th District, lamented that it was "not normal" for a party official to "threaten ProPublica with retaliation from Trump" for writing a profile about another GOP official.
Despite the threats, Clark says "ProPublica persisted" with the story that Mercer "warned [it] not to tell."
"I'm always amazed when grown-ups with jobs say things like this to journalists," said Jessica Huseman, a former ProPublica reporter. "Like, do you think that's gonna do anything but make us more eager to publish the story?"
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More Than 170 US Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents, Some Abused or Detained for Days: ProPublica
"Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents," the investigation found.
Oct 17, 2025
More than 170 US citizens have been detained by immigration agents against their will since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, according to a new investigation by ProPublica.
The reporters examined every publicly available case they could find in which citizens were detained by immigration officers.
"Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents," they wrote in the report published Thursday. "They've had their necks kneeled on. They've been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched."
"About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones," continued the report.
The findings fly in the face of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's recent assertion, in a ruling that allowed the Trump administration to use racial profiling to carry out its mass deportation agenda in Los Angeles, that "if the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go."
Video evidence from Los Angeles has shown immigration officials carrying out what appear to be large, indiscriminate roundups of random groups of Latino people.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who has been at the helm of Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago, has acknowledged in an interview with a local news station that immigration enforcement decides whether to detain people based on "how they look," and suggested that the white reporter interviewing him would be less likely to be detained.
ProPublica's report bolsters the accusation that the administration is carrying out explicit racial profiling. The investigation found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship, almost all of whom were Latino.
And while immigration officials are allowed to arrest citizens who obstruct their operations or assault officers, it found that the 130 cases in which Americans were accused of doing so "often wilted under scrutiny." In nearly 50, it said, charges were never filed or the cases were dismissed, while only a small number have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Citizens who have been detained have often faced severe mistreatment at the hands of officers:
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed, and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative.
In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn't given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery.
In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
The investigation also found that at least 20 of the detained US citizens were children, including two with cancer. Another four were held, with their undocumented mother, for weeks without access to a lawyer. They were released following the intervention of Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), but still remain without their mother, who has not been accused of a crime.
In many cases, agents were found to have ignored proof of citizenship. In one case, they tackled an Alabama construction worker, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, to the ground even as he shouted that he was a citizen. When officers took out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to US citizens, they dismissed it as fake and held Garcia in handcuffs for over an hour. Agents later detained him a second time and dismissed his REAL ID again, while also holding two other workers with legal status.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called ProPublica's report "absolutely shocking."
"ICE does not have the authority to detain US citizens during immigration enforcement—full stop," she said. "The Trump administration is out of control, violating the rights of American citizens. They must be held accountable."
ProPublica's investigation focused on the detention of US citizens, but Kavanaugh's contention that legal immigrants are also "promptly released" is also flagrantly untrue. While there has not been a comprehensive effort to aggregate the number of green-card or visa holders detained or deported, there have been numerous documented cases of them falling into the grasp of immigration enforcement without any clear justification.
Earlier this week, the BBC reported that 48-year-old Paramjit Singh, a green-card holder who has a brain tumor and a heart condition, has been in ICE detention for over two months and has been denied the medical care he needs, despite there being no active cases against him. Another green-card holder in Kentucky, Vicente Castillo Flores, who has lived in the US for over 30 years, was detained by ICE earlier this month at a toll booth despite showing agents his work visa. According to Newsweek, the agency has not provided a reason for why he was detained despite his legal status.
The ProPublica reporters noted that their investigation was undertaken because "the government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans." They said the number of US citizens held in detention was likely even higher than what they reported.
Their report is the latest in a long line of reports that have revealed an extraordinary lack of accountability and transparency for ICE and Trump's immigration enforcement agenda, which has mainly gone after people without criminal records despite Trump's claims to the contrary.
Last month, an investigation from the Miami Herald found that over 1,000 detainees held at Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility had mysteriously vanished, with no record of where they went, leading the Florida Immigrant Coalition to describe it as "an extrajudicial black site."
Three individuals have died in ICE custody just over the past two weeks, bringing the total number up to 23 this year, the highest number in 20 years.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called ProPublica's report "an outrage."
"Every single Republican needs to answer for this," she said. "We can't let this administration sweep this kind of gross abuse of power under the rug."
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