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Trump Calls for a Fed. Reserve Governor to Resign Over Allegations of Mortgage Fraud (LAWSPLAINING) – Twitchy

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August 21, 2025
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Trump Calls for a Fed. Reserve Governor to Resign Over Allegations of Mortgage Fraud (LAWSPLAINING) – Twitchy

Let’s start with an introduction. This is Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, speaking about tariffs:





The Federal Reserve’s website says the following about her:

Lisa D. Cook took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on May 23, 2022, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2024. She was reappointed to the Board on September 8, 2023, and sworn in on September 13, 2023, for a term ending January 31, 2038.

If you really want to learn more about her, you can read her official biography here:

But she is in the news today because Trump is now calling for her to resign:

So, what is going on, here? The issue appears to be alleged mortgage fraud. It all started when U.S. Director of Federal Housing Bill Pulte unveiled a letter he wrote to the Department of Justice, claiming that she basically did the same thing that Adam Schiff and Letitia James allegedly did: Falsely claiming a second home is a primary residence when it was not in order to get a better deal on a loan. Here’s where Mr. Pulte posted the apparent body of the letter on Twitter/X:

Specifically, the letter states that she got a loan on a property in Ann Arbor, Michigan on June 18, 2021:

According to the mortgage agreement entered into with the University of Michigan Credit Union, Ms. Cook represented to ‘use the property as Borrower’s primary residence within 60 days after the execution of this Security instrument and shall continue to occupy the Property as Borrower’s principal residence for at least one year after occupancy.’

To nitpick a little bit, it sounds the term ‘represented to’ is incorrect. It sounds more like she ‘promised to’ use the property as her principal residence within 60 days and keep using it for at least one year after that. And we will see in a moment that this is an important legal distinction.

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But the timing is critical. Exactly two weeks later, on July 2, 2021, she got a thirty-year mortgage on a condo in Atlanta, Georgia, according to the letter:

In the mortgage agreement, Ms. Cook affirmed that this property would serve as her primary residence within sixty days of the execution of the mortgage and would serve as her primary residence for a full year.

In addition to that, she allegedly listed this property for rent in September, 2022, which doesn’t clash with her claim that it would be her primary residence for a full year. More interestingly the letter ends by saying:

While the property was listed for rent in 2022, a review of Ms. Cook’s federal government financial disclosures for calendar years 2022 and 2023 indicate that she has not disclosed any rental income tied to this address.

So those disclosures might not have been truthful—it depends on whether or not she successfully rented the place out and we don’t know whether or not she did. And naturally, if we were working for the Trump administration we would look at what her tax returns said for that year.

Now to break things down a little more, if the letter is representing the facts accurately (and we have no way of knowing if it is) it sounds like at the very least she made two promises that she would have difficulty keeping. She promised to make one home her ‘principal residence’ and the other her ‘primary residence’ during the same time period. The two terms, ‘principal residence’ and ‘primary residence,’ are typically understood as synonymous, but it is possible for one contract or the other to define one of those terms in a unique way that might give her some wiggle room. That might present one defense.

Another obvious defense is this. If we assume—in addition to prior assumptions—that there is an unavoidable incompatibility between these loan agreements, then this would suggest that she breached at least one of the two contracts. But a breach of a contract is not typically a crime. In other words, imagine if you promised to help a person move out of their home on a certain date in exchange for money, paid after the job is complete. Then suppose that when the time comes to fulfill the contract, you flake out and don’t show up. Typically that is not a crime. Sure, you can be sued for the breach of contract, but typically the law doesn’t make the breach a crime.





But on the other hand, if you enter into a contract with absolutely no intention to fulfill it, that can be fraud. Fraud, as you might know, is typically defined in the law as a 1) false statement, 2) that the accused knew was false when he or she made it, 3) made purposefully, with the intent of fooling the victim, 4) which the victim believed and relied on, 5) causing harm to the victim. So, in this context, the false statement might be language in the contract indicating that the person intended to make one place or the other the primary/principal residence, if they never intended to obey this provision. In other words, it is not fraud for a person to enter into a contract and decide later to break it. But if you can prove he or she never intended to adhere to it, that can be fraud.

Or to put it more simply, this was a promise. Every person alive has made a promise to another person and for one reason or another failed to fulfill it. You might promise to be at your daughter’s softball game, and then you find out that a family member has been in an accident and you need to go to the hospital right now. Good people try not to break promises unless they have no other choice, but broken promises are not typically fraudulent. But if you make a promise with no intent to keep it at the time you said it, that can be fraud.

That’s where an investigation might fill in the blanks. For instance, if she had been negotiating both contracts for over a month, that would suggest it would be impossible for her to have earnestly promised in both contracts to make each home her principal/primary residence (again, assuming the terms are defined in the usual manner). Likewise, if she ended up staying primarily in her Ann Arbor home, then that would be strong evidence that later, when she signed the Atlanta contract, that she never intended to follow the Atlanta contract.

In any case, it was essentially that news that led to Trump’s call for her to resign, the President linking to a news story about the allegations. We have no idea whether or not she will resign, but Trump might not have to wait for her to do so, as this person pointed out:





The cut off text reads:

‘For cause’ has consistently been read in U.S. administrative law to mean misconduct, neglect of duty, or actions incompatible with the integrity of office. Mortgage fraud is a federal felony (18 U.S.C. § 1014). Since the Federal Reserve’s core responsibility is to oversee the integrity of the U.S. financial system, a Governor credibly engaged in mortgage fraud directly undermines that duty.

That is squarely ‘for cause.’

Lisa: resign or you’re going to be fired by the President of the United States.

Now, he’s not 100% accurate but, overall, he is correct about the law. If you happened to look up 12 U.S.C. § 242 you see that the phrase ‘Any member of the Board shall be removable by the President for cause’ is not literally there. But it does say this:

Upon the expiration of the term of any appointive member of the Federal Reserve Board in office on August 23, 1935, the President shall fix the term of the successor to such member at not to exceed fourteen years, as designated by the President at the time of nomination, but in such manner as to provide for the expiration of the term of not more than one member in any two-year period, and thereafter each member shall hold office for a term of fourteen years from the expiration of the term of his predecessor, unless sooner removed for cause by the President.

So, while the statute does not say those exact words, the language we highlighted clearly indicates that Trump can dismiss a member for cause. And mortgage fraud is such a cause. Also, strangely, the statute dealing with loan fraud is 18 U.S. Code § 1344. We don’t know why these discrepancies exist but Fishback’s bottom line is correct: A person in such an important position in our banking system should not be committing fraud, and proof of fraud is cause for dismissal.





But naturally, that depends on facts we cannot verify, involving legal documents we have never seen. So, we cannot judge whether the evidence is strong enough to justify dismissal, let alone criminal charges.

On to reactions:

Except we all know it was based on a very dubious valuation of Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago and we tend to think this was really just part of the political witch-hunt that went on during the Autopen Administration Biden Administration.

*eye roll*

The cut off text:

Should the Federal Reserve be audited to see if these Fed Governors and others are committing fraud?

That’s … oddly credible, wholly apart from what one might think about the accusations against Ms. Cook.

Who gave the order to go after Trump?

We tend to agree, with reasonable redactions.





We think Trump should respond to Warren with this clip:

(And if you are too young to get the reference, it is a scene from an anti-drug ad where a father gets mad at his son because he found drugs in his room and asks him how he learned to use drugs. The kid responds ‘I learned it from watching you!’ and the father realizes he was himself to blame. And yes, the ad is as cheesy as that sounds. And while that probably drains all the humor out of our joke to explain it, at least next time you will get it without an explanation.)

Next, well… sometimes it is not what is said so much as who said it that makes a response significant:

If we were Cook, we would start talking to a lawyer. Again, we are not saying she is definitely guilty—innocent people talk to lawyers all the time when they are the focus of an investigation—but it really might make sense for her to engage counsel.

As usual, leftists are either misrepresenting the issue or failing to understand it. Of course people can own as many homes as they want. But if you lie about the intended use of a property when seeking a loan, that is a different problem. In ordinary legal parlance, you can only have one principal or primary residence at a time.

Sometimes these leftists get their talking points mixed up. That’s how you can tell they are mindlessly parroting talking points without comprehension.





The 34 convictions were for campaign finance violations. No loans were involved.

*Snorts laughter.* As we said throughout the piece, we don’t know if she is guilty or not—more information is needed—but we think that is pretty funny.

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Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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