Lawyers for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor, called Trump administration allegations of mortgage fraud against her “baseless” on Monday and accused the administration of “cherry-picking” discrepancies to bolster their claims.
After accusing Cook of misrepresenting multiple residences as her primary residence to get a better mortgage rate, Donald Trump briefly fired Cook from her role as a Fed governor and as one of 12 voting members of the Federal Reserve board that sets interest rates. The supreme court reinstated her and will in January hear arguments over Cook’s removal.
In the letter, addressed to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, and Edward Martin, the deputy attorney general, Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, outlined for the first time Cook’s detailed defense against the accusations. Lowell said that the dispute involves three of Cook’s properties: a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a condo in Atlanta, Georgia, and a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lowell said Cook’s primary residence is in Ann Arbor, where she has been a professor at Michigan State University since 2005. While she has been on unpaid leave from the position as she serves on the Fed board, she intends to return to Ann Arbor once her post ends, the letter said.
Cook was raised in Milledgeville, Georgia – a town outside Atlanta. In 2021, Cook purchased a condo in Atlanta to have a place that is close to her family. Though one line on the mortgage application for the property lists it as a primary residence, Lowell argued that it was clearly “inadvertent” and was an “isolated notation”.
Any proof of criminal wrongdoing must show that Cook had intentionally misrepresented the property to defraud lenders. But other loan documents show Cook said the home was a vacation home, and nowhere else did she say it was her primary residency. In annual financial disclosures, Cook has listed the condo accurately as a “personal residence”, Lowell wrote.
For her home in Cambridge, which Cook purchased before she moved to Ann Arbor, Lowell wrote that she has consistently listed the home as a second home and rental property for mortgage documents.
In his letter, Lowell specifically criticized William Pulte, a Trump ally and director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), for using his role to help target Trump’s political enemies. Pulte has also targeted Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, two vocal critics of Trump, for similar accusations of mortgage fraud.
“The complete package of Governor Cook’s materials clearly demonstrate that this does not amount to the type of criminal wrongdoing that Director Pulte and the president state it to be,” Lowell wrote. “Governor Cook’s loan documents made clear her intended uses and, therefore, were not submitted with an intent to mislead the lender or anyone else.”
Lowell also said that while Pulte said that anyone, Republican or Democrat, should be held accountable for mortgage fraud, recent reporting has found that four members of Trump’s cabinet, including Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, also had similar discrepancies on their mortgage documents.
“His actions undercut his words. If one seemingly facial contradiction about several property documents were the basis for the mortgage fraud he claims, then one would expect that he would have made referrals to [the justice department] based on the same types of documents about others who appear to have similar or analogous primary residences for more than one home,” Lowell wrote. “Yet, director Pulte has ignored many of those allegations.”
