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TRUMP IS ACCUSING FOES WITH MULTIPLE MORTGAGES OF FRAUD. RECORDS SHOW
3 OF HIS CABINET MEMBERS HAVE THEM.  
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Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, Alex Mierjeski
September 4, 2025
ProPublica
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_ The White House has targeted opponents, including a Fed governor,
for having more than one primary residence on their loan papers.
ProPublica found that, in one case, a Trump cabinet secretary got two
such mortgages in quick succession. _

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_ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign
up for The Big Story newsletter
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to receive stories like this one in your inbox_.

The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower
mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their
loan papers.

President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target
political foes, including a governor
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the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator
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and a state attorney general.

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different
mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage
records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own
Cabinet.

Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at
least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their
primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while
examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and
publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media
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Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence
mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a
country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in
New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental
Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in
Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan
records.

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in
accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming
two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it
for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company
fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal
referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift
consequences. “Fraud will not be tolerated in President Trump’s
housing market,” Pulte has warned.

Real estate experts told ProPublica that, in its bid to wrest control
of the historically independent Fed and go after political enemies,
the Trump administration has mischaracterized mortgage rules. Its
justification for launching criminal investigations, they said, could
also apply to the Trump Cabinet members.

All three Cabinet members denied wrongdoing. In a statement, a White
House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a
left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President
Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa
‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage
fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin
own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are
fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable
terms than for a second home or an investment property. That includes
better interest rates and the ability to borrow more money.

The idea is that borrowers are more likely to pay back — and less
likely to default on — a loan attached to the home they actually
live in. That makes those loans less risky for lenders. Interest rates
are typically a quarter- to a half-point lower for primary mortgages,
according to Pulte. On the low end, that could save around $75 each
month over the life of a 30-year, 5% interest, half-million-dollar
loan — or a total of around $25,000.

Standard mortgage documents commonly include an occupancy clause that
requires the borrower to use the property as their principal residence
for at least a year. They also include a section where borrowers can
check a box when the mortgage is for a second home.

Misrepresenting occupancy status is not rare, according to a widely
cited 2023 study
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from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In interviews, real
estate lawyers said that mortgage lenders are typically well aware of
their clients’ other loans and sometimes even encourage the
primary-residence language for second homes.

They also pointed to a mundane reason that innocent mistakes are
common: Homebuyers simply sign stacks of forms without reading them.

“Few consumers understand this issue, and if there is someone at
fault here, it is likely the loan officer who likely advised them to
sign up for this loan that obviously wasn’t for their primary
residence,” said real estate lawyer Doug Miller. “Loan officers
who are competing for business will often quote lower rates in order
to get a customer’s business.”

Mortgage fraud is rarely prosecuted
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according to real estate lawyers and federal sentencing data. Pulte
has pointed to a case from 2016
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in which a California woman was found guilty of obtaining multiple
loans for condos that she falsely stated would be her primary
residence. But that case had an added layer of fraud: The woman never
intended to live in the homes. She was secretly being paid because she
had good credit to act as a front for the true buyer of the
properties, to whom they were later transferred. She later defaulted
on the loans, causing more than half a million dollars in losses for
the lenders.

Lawyers told ProPublica that determining ill intent would be key to
prosecute. “Fraud requires the borrower to be aware that the
borrower was making a false representation,” said Jon Goodman, an
attorney focused on real estate at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and
Greenstein.

But Pulte has framed the issue in black-and-white terms: “Your
second home is not your primary home,” he warned in one recent post
on X.

By that standard, Trump’s labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, could be
in the wrong.

In her financial disclosure form, she listed two mortgages on personal
residences, both obtained in 2021. Mortgage records show her home is
in Happy Valley, a city near Portland where Chavez-DeRemer served as
mayor before being elected to represent the area in the U.S. House.

She and her husband, Shawn DeRemer, who leads an anesthesia company in
Portland, refinanced their longtime Oregon home
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in January 2021. Two months later, the couple bought a newly built
house near a golf course in Fountain Hills, Arizona.

The pair had previously enjoyed vacationing in Arizona, according to
news reports and social media posts. (In one incident that made the
news, Chavez-DeRemer was briefly hospitalized after a golf cart
accident on her way back from watching a Sonoran Desert sunset.)

The mortgage agreement for the Arizona property
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required them to occupy the home as their “principal residence”
for at least a year, barring “extenuating circumstances” or the
lender allowing them to violate the stipulation.

A spokesperson for Chavez-DeRemer said that the couple bought the
Arizona home with the intent to retire there, but then Chavez-DeRemer
decided to run for Congress representing her Oregon district and did
not move.

“This is nothing more than a left-wing rag inventing a story just to
attack the Trump Administration. It’s common for families to
refinance then buy a home with future plans in mind — trying to spin
that as some type of scandal is pure nonsense,” said spokesperson
Courtney Parella.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a White House official said
that although DeRemer opted to stay in Oregon, her husband
“continued to move forward with the process of becoming” an
Arizona resident. Political donation records list his home in Oregon
as recently as late 2023.

Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, and his wife also have two
primary-residence mortgages, obtained a few years apart.

In August 2021, the Duffys, who have nine children, purchased a large
$2 million home in Far Hills, New Jersey
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about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, where Rachel Campos-Duffy
works as a Fox News host.

They got a $1.6 million mortgage to purchase the property, and
documents show it was a “principal residence” loan.

In February, after Duffy took the job in Trump’s cabinet, the couple
bought another home, in Washington, D.C. Again, they got a
principal-residence mortgage
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this time for $1.76 million. Both Duffy and his wife are listed as
borrowers on both mortgages, which came from the same bank.

It’s not clear where Sean Duffy lives most of the time, and a
Department of Transportation spokesperson declined to answer questions
about where Duffy and his wife each make their primary home. In late
May, several months after they purchased the Washington home, “Fox &
Friends Weekend” ran a segment in which Rachel Campos-Duffy cooked a
“Make America Healthy Again”
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Doocy. Sean Duffy and some of the couple’s children were also in the
segment, and it was filmed in the New Jersey home.

Duffy’s spokesperson said in a statement that after being confirmed,
“Sean purchased a home in Washington D.C. where he works full-time.
The home in DC is not a rental, investment or vacation property. The
same bank holds both mortgages and was fully informed of Secretary
Duffy’s new employment location and need for a DC residence.”

A White House spokesperson said, “The bank, not the Secretary,
determined and classified both mortgages as primary residences.”

Like the Duffys, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, and his wife also
have two concurrent primary-residence mortgages.

One, obtained in 2007
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is on a home in Shirley, New York, on Long Island, which Zeldin
represented in Congress for several years. Last year, Zeldin and his
wife obtained a second mortgage
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for $712,500, on a property in Washington, D.C., a short walk from the
EPA’s headquarters. Both are primary-residence mortgages.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that Zeldin’s primary
residence was previously on Long Island but is now in Washington. The
spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about where his wife lives.
“Administrator Zeldin followed ALL steps to complete the move in
accordance with all laws, rules, and contracts, notifying his mortgage
company, insurance company, and local government,” the spokesperson
said. “EVERY ‘I’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed 1000% by the
book without exception.”

The dual mortgages identified by ProPublica among Trump’s cabinet
secretaries resemble the loans obtained by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, whom
Trump accused of mortgage fraud.

In May, Pulte referred Schiff to the Justice Department for taking out
a primary-residence mortgage in Maryland, for a home he purchased in
2003 after being elected to the House, while also claiming his primary
home was in Burbank, California, in the district he represented.
Schiff and his wife refinanced the Maryland home several times as a
primary residence, Pulte noted, until a 2020 refinance in which they
reclassified it as a secondary home.

“Schiff appears to have falsified records in order to receive
favorable loan terms,” Pulte concluded in a letter to Attorney
General Pam Bondi.

Representatives for Schiff called the allegations “transparently
false” and said his lenders had “full knowledge of the senator’s
year-round bicoastal work obligations” and “his use of two homes
for that reason.” Schiff, according to his office, navigated the two
mortgages in consultation with a House lawyer.

Pulte made similar allegations in a criminal referral about New York
Attorney General Letitia James, alleging she may have committed fraud
by getting a primary-residence mortgage for a home in Virginia, even
though her position required her to live in New York. Her lawyer has
said James helped a family member buy the property
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and notified the mortgage broker at the time that it would not be her
primary residence. James became one of Trump’s top political enemies
after she brought a fraud lawsuit
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against the president and his company in 2022. Representatives for
James have called the fraud claims made against her politically
motivated and false. (Pulte did not respond to a request for comment
from ProPublica.)

Pulte’s most consequential allegations thus far were made against
Cook, a Federal Reserve governor. Trump has been going after Fed Chair
Jerome Powell for months for not lowering interest rates, even raising
the specter that he would take the unprecedented step of attempting to
fire the chair. Pulte’s criminal referral against Cook presented
Trump with another avenue for bending the traditionally independent
Fed to his will, securing a majority of the Fed’s board by firing
Cook, a move that Cook has sued to block.

Pulte pointed to mortgage records that show that within just a couple
of weeks, Cook signed primary-residence mortgages for homes in
Michigan and Georgia. Legal experts said the close proximity was a red
flag but that much was still unknown, including Cook’s intent and
what her lenders were told. Pulte also flagged a third property, in
Massachusetts, that Cook represented as a second home in mortgage
documents but as an investment property in subsequent financial
disclosures. Investment properties can be hit with higher mortgage
rates than second homes.

“3 strikes and you’re out,” he posted on X.

Cook’s lawyers have denied that she committed mortgage fraud but
have not provided a detailed explanation of the context for the
various mortgages. They argued in court
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this week that her loans cannot be legally used as grounds to
terminate her.

The Justice Department has begun investigating all three Trump foes
singled out in Pulte’s referrals, according to news reports. The
department has issued subpoenas in Cook’s case, The Wall Street
Journal reported
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Thursday.

ProPublica’s review of mortgage agreements by Trump cabinet
officials shows that some made clear to lenders they were purchasing
second homes.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for
example, got a mortgage for his home near the Kennedy Compound in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the agreement included a rider making it
clear he would be using it as a second home.

Do you have any information that we should know? Robert Faturechi can
be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal
or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at
[email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Brandon Roberts [[link removed]]
and Steve Suo [[link removed]] of
ProPublica and Matthew Termine of Hunterbrook Media contributed
research.

* Donald Trump
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* MORTGAGE FRAUD
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