Donald Trump’s administration has a favorite tool to go after their political enemies.
Trump has members of his administration scouring the records to accuse or, in the case of New York Attorney General James, charge people they view as enemies with committing mortgage fraud by obtaining a mortgage for a primary residence that is not the applicant’s primary residence.
It has become common for Trump to be guilty of what he accuses others of. It was only a matter of time before someone dug into Trump’s mortgage applications and found something.
What turned out was that Trump claimed on multiple applications in Florida that the properties were for his primary residence, but that he had no intention of living there. The buildings were intended for commercial use.
ProPublica reported:
Mortgage law experts who reviewed the data for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s double mortgages. They said simultaneously claiming primary residences on several mortgages, 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 these types of situations, he will have to fire himself or turn to the Justice Department,” said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University and a leading expert on mortgage financing. “Trump has judged that this type of misrepresentation is enough to deter anyone from serving the country.”
The Trump administration likes to talk about transparency in an Orwellian way, but Trump’s response to questions about his own mortgages was anything but transparent.
The story continues below.
