Donald Trump’s housing chief carried out a behind-the-scenes effort to sabotage the president’s former defense attorney, who now helms the Justice Department.
Bill Pulte, the 38-year-old Trump loyalist leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), pulled Todd Blanche’s mortgage records last year amid a dispute between the two men over how to exact revenge on the president’s political enemies, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Blanche, 52, was then serving as deputy attorney general and has since moved up to the top job at the Justice Department.
At the time, Pulte was looking for evidence of mortgage fraud to bolster DOJ efforts to prosecute the 80-year-old president’s political enemies, including Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
The housing chief eventually referred fraud allegations against those figures to prosecutors. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the Journal they believe Pulte also looked into Blanche’s own mortgage records in the hope of finding information he could use to pressure the then-deputy AG into investigating his claims against Schiff, James, and Cook.
During the same period, Blanche is understood to have also been looking into whether Pulte and other members of the Trump administration had potentially shared sensitive details of the DOJ’s probe of Schiff and others with unauthorized parties.
Pulte eventually determined that Blanche’s records, which include a loan on his own home and that of his son in Florida, were above board. Blanche brought no charges in his probe of Schiff or the leak about the DOJ’s investigations into the Democratic senator. Prosecutors’ cases against James and Cook ultimately fell apart.
The housing chief fast established himself after taking office last year as one of the most contentious members of the Trump administration. Other officials have said he consistently goes beyond his duties to impress the president, even if it often blows back hard on the White House.
Trump, for his part, appears to put a lot of stock in Pulte’s loyalty. The president has pushed back against aides advising he oust the housing chief, going so far as to nominate Pulte last summer as director of national intelligence despite his lack of any national security experience. The Senate quickly shot that idea down.
Pulte’s lawyer told the Journal that “any statement that Director Pulte examined or reviewed” Blanche’s mortgage files was false. Spokespersons for both his agency and the Justice Department framed the claims as an effort to stoke division between the two men. The Daily Beast has contacted the FHFA and the DOJ for further comment.
