Lawyers for Fed governor accuse Trump administration of ‘cherry-picking’ facts in fraud case
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,”
UK downplays reports it has stopped sharing intelligence with US regarding narco-traffickers
Britain’s foreign secretary has downplayed reports that the UK had stopped sharing intelligence with the US that could be used by the Americans to conduct deadly attacks against alleged narco-traffickers in the Caribbean.Yvette Cooper, speaking on a ministerial trip to Naples, said “longstanding intelligence and law enforcement frameworks” that existed between the countries were continuing as the US deployed a carrier strike group to the region.She said: “As you know, we don’t comment on the detail of intelligence matters, but I think you’ll probably have seen the US secretary of state has dismissed some of the reports that have been made.”Cooper was making the first public comments by a British minister on reports from last week that the UK had halted a line of intelligence sharing amid concerns it believed the US bombing campaign was not legal under international law.Marco Rubio described the reports, first made by CNN, as “a false story, it’s a fake story”
How to stop the rise of Reform UK? Expose its contradictions | Letters
The combination of charts showing the spread of Reform UK supporters (Who supports Reform and why?, 13 November), and Aditya Chakrabortty’s typically shrewd and combative commentary (The real Reform voters have been revealed – it’s a slapdash coalition Farage will struggle to hold together, 13 November) represented a rare bright spot in an increasingly bleak political landscape.They provide a clear roadmap towards challenging what too many doomsayers have been presenting as the inevitability of a Reform UK victory at the next general election.The task now for those who are alarmed by the rise of Nigel Farage’s cult is to use these findings to constantly highlight the inherent contradictions within his policies, while remembering the wisdom of one 19th-century political economist who said that philosophers had only interpreted the world, but the task is to change it. Keir Starmer, take note.Les Bright Exeter, Devon Aditya Chakrabortty suggests that, come a general election, Nigel Farage will have to “cobble together an actual platform, he’ll have to pick a side” from his “curious dish of microwaved Thatcherism, seasoned with a big dash of old Labour”
Wasted public money and Rachel Reeves’s income tax hokey cokey | Letters
In discussion of the chancellor’s need to raise taxes and cut spending, there has been too little focus on making better use of current resources. Every day, money is wasted because fragmented public services continue to work in silos and are not organised around the needs of individuals, families and communities. Too little is spent on preventing problems and too much on responding to them.As ministers and officials, we promoted Total Place pilots in 2009-10. They showed that far better outcomes could be achieved for the same money when Whitehall allowed local service leaders to work with local communities across service and budget boundaries
No 10 turns to influencers to reach audiences beyond mainstream media
Next time you’re scrolling on TikTok or Instagram and that fitness guru or “mumfluencer” you follow pops up, they might be joined by an unexpected guest.As part of a UK government strategy to reach voters on social media – where more than half of people now get their news – ministers including Keir Starmer are making appearances on some of the most popular channels.Last week, the science communicator Simon Clark broadcast his FaceTime call with Starmer at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil to his 73,000 followers.The campaigner Anna Whitehouse – who goes by Mother Pukka – posted clips of her conversation with Bridget Phillipson about the inadequacies of the English childcare system to 444,000 followers in July.And earlier this month, two personal finance influencers, Cameron Smith and Abi Foster, were given front-row seats at Rachel Reeves’s press conference where she warned voters about forthcoming tax rises
Angela Rayner declines to rule out running for Labour leader as she condemns infighting
Allies of Angela Rayner say the former deputy prime minister will seek to renew her public profile in the coming months and would be likely to run in a future leadership contest.In her first major interview this weekend, Rayner condemned the “arrogant tittle-tattle” and Labour infighting dominating the past week. Rayner, often considered as a potential successor to Keir Starmer, declined to rule out running for the job or returning to frontline politics, saying she had “not gone away”.However, those close to Rayner, who had been seen as a frontrunner to succeed Starmer until her shock resignation over underpaid stamp duty, say she was significantly shaken by the impact on her family. They said that would be the key factor over whether she would run and that it was nonsense that she was plotting any imminent challenge
When reality bites: the rapid rise and chaotic fall of Reform UK in Cornwall
Resignations, suspensions and infighting lead to party losing crown of highest number of seats in the county“I know whenever I come back here next,” Nigel Farage told a jubilant crowd of hundreds in a leisure centre in Redruth, “Reform UK will become a dominant force, not just in Cornwall politics, but in British politics.”That was in February and when the local elections arrived three months later it appeared Farage’s prophecy was in part coming true – Reform took 28 seats on Cornwall council, the highest number of any party.But during his speech at Carn Brea leisure centre, Farage also warned his rapturous supporters “we have to convert theory into reality” – and reality in Cornwall is now biting.Six months on from the local elections – after which Reform was unable to form an administration, leaving the Liberal Democrats and independents to set up a ruling coalition – the party’s presence in the county is in disarray following weeks of resignations, suspensions and infighting that mean Reform UK no longer holds the highest number of seats in the authority.Critics say that along with the chaos in the Reform-led council of Kent, the farcical scenes in Cornwall, where Reform act as the official opposition are further evidence that the party is not capable of delivering beyond a protest vote
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