CNN’s Elie Honig says fired fed governor’s defense against Trump has been ‘underwhelming’

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Thursday former Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s attorneys were not offering much of a defense for her over mortgage fraud allegations.

President Donald Trump fired Cook from the Federal Reserve on Aug.25, citing the allegations of mortgage fraud. Honig said that while the probe into Cook may have political motivations, it was far “more substantial” than similar probes into Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

“There is no question there’s a political motive. Just look at the timeline,” Honig told CNN host Anderson Cooper on “Anderson Cooper 360.” “Donald Trump spent much of the summer posting on social media and talking about how he wants to get rid of Fed governors who would not vote with him to lower interest rates. While he’s doing that, this guy, Bill Pulte, who had donated over $1 million to Donald Trump’s various political interests, then becomes the head of the federal housing fraud agency and launches these investigations into several high-profile Democrats, including Lisa Cook. And then when Pulte makes his referral to DoJ public, Donald Trump 30 minutes later says, ‘Aha! Now she’s got to go.’ It’s overtly political.”

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“However, at the same time, these allegations do appear substantial, more substantial than the allegations that have been made against Letitia James and Adam Schiff,” Honig continued. “As you said, she took two different mortgages within two weeks of each other, claimed they were both primary principal residences. There’s a third residence where she said was a second home, but she was actually renting it out as an investment property. And the defenses we’ve heard from Lisa Cook’s lawyer so far have been underwhelming, essentially saying, well, maybe there was a clerical error.”

James sued Trump in September 2022, alleging he overstated the value of real estate holdings to obtain loans after vowing to investigate Trump during her initial campaign for attorney general in 2018, during which she labeled him an “illegitimate president.”

Schiff allegedly claimed a Maryland house as his primary residence in multiple finance applications, reportedly securing a lower interest rate as a result. Schiff often made claims about alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia after Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee on Jan. 24, 2023, citing allegations that Schiff lied on multiple issues, including claiming that a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation and his defense of the Steele dossier. Schiff was censured by the House of Representatives in June 2023 for claiming that Trump colluded with Russia during his successful 2016 presidential campaign.

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