U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce that the Space Force Command will move from Colorado to Alabama, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies in the federal government have found a new tactic to use against political opponents: investigating them for alleged mortgage fraud.
The Trump foes being targeted include Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), New York Attorney General Letitia James, and U.S. Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook. And economist Paul Krugman, during an August 30 appearance on MSNBC, revealed to host Ali Velshi that he has "been getting a bunch of e-mails from friends saying" that federal officials are probably "rummaging through your mortgage records right now."
Krugman, an outspoken Trump critic, told Velshi that such a bogus fishing expedition is "likely," adding, "I think it was (Josef) Stalin's chief of secret police who said, 'Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime.' And that's kind of the America that we're becoming."
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Legal expert Matt Ford discussed Trump and his allies' mortgage fraud tactic during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast" posted on September 9, calling it out as a troubling "abuse of power."
Ford described the mortgage-related probes of Trump foes as "corrupt" tactic that "smacks of a selective prosecution."
"It's corrupt because it's clearly serving the president's own personal political goals," Ford told "Daily Blast" host Greg Sargent. "There's no real policy interest here in pursuing this because it appears to be — I wouldn't like to say common, but not uncommon, which suggests that this smacks of a selective prosecution. There's also an element of vindictiveness here since Trump has been accused far more credibly of manipulating his own asset prices and engaging in all sorts of shady behavior with regard to his own real estate dealings. That's what got him in trouble with the New York attorney general's office, for example."
Ford continued, "(Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William) Pulte has also tried to bring similar allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James, saying that she has engaged in this as well. There's clearly a vindictive element here in what's going on, and it smacks of selective prosecution."
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The legal analyst equated this tactic with "seeing a bunch of people cross the street and only picking out a few people for jaywalking."
"This isn't to say that people should engage in anything unscrupulous on their mortgages, but that Trump doesn't really deserve the benefit of the doubt here," Ford explained. "And that's an important factor when we consider the ramifications of him firing (Cook) from the Fed."
Ford argued that Trump officials' mortgage fraud tactic "evokes Watergate" and Richard Nixon's presidency.
"This wasn't the central part of Watergate, but one of the things that emerged from that investigation — from the close scrutiny of the Nixon Administration — was that Nixon and his allies were combing through IRS records to subject his political enemies and adversaries and people he just didn't like to greater scrutiny," Ford told Sargent. "That was widely seen as an abuse of power, and I believe that's where some of the privacy restrictions on taxpayer information now come from. So, mortgages and anything that involves close financial information — unless you have some rational predicate for an investigation, it's inappropriate. It really is."
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Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read the transcript here.