In a recent column, Some mortgage fraud is inevitable. But Lisa Cook needs to come clean., WashPost opinionator Megan McArdle had this to say about the recent uncovering of apparent “mortgage fraud” (a federal felony) on the part of Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserves Board of Governors, whom President Trump is currently trying to fire:
A public-records search by Reuters appears to confirm that on June 18, 2021, Cook obtained a mortgage from a Michigan credit union for a property in Washtenaw County, Michigan, which she said would be her primary residence [which would entitle her to a lower mortgage rate]. Two weeks later, she obtained a mortgage from a different credit union for a condo in Atlanta, which she also said would be her primary residence. Obviously, she could not live in two places at once.
Instead, it appears that Cook lived in one residence and rented out the other. And this is mortgage fraud, a felony, though, Megan tells us, federal prosecutors rarely bring charges—especially, one assumes, in “low key” instances like this one. But still.
You can argue that a Fed governor has to be above reproach. But you can also argue that this is an almost victimless crime, and that the current investigation is a pretextual witch hunt that threatens the Fed’s independence. I, for one, find that second argument pretty convincing.
Except that, as Megan natters on (yes, I am being unkind), she doesn’t seem to find that second argument all that convincing after all, instead concluding that “almost victimless” crimes are still crimes, and the law, after all, is still the law, to the point that she ends her column with, basically, a threat:
So unless Cook explains why this really wasn’t occupancy fraud, we’re left with two unpalatable choices: letting a public official get away with something the system can’t afford to publicly condone, or letting Trump get away with something that no one can afford to publicly condone.
The only way out of that conundrum is for Cook to tell us why what looks like occupancy fraud was actually no such thing. So I sure hope she does, and soon.
The thing is, McArdle has made it pretty clear that she thinks Cook is guilty of mortgage (or “occupancy”) fraud, so then what? Trump would be justified in firing her? She ought to go to jail?
I raise all this (in case you were wondering), because in another “almost victimless” crime, involving quite a bit more cash, our Megan was considerably more lenient. I refer to another recent column by Megan, When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare, blasting New York State Attorney General Letitia James for bringing a suit for civil fraud against Sir Donald, a case that resulted in a conviction and the leveling of an enormous fine on Trump, a fine that was overturned on appeal. Wrote Megan
James planned to use her office to harass Trump before she had evidence that he had committed a crime under New York law — which we know because she said so on the campaign trail. In 2022, she delivered on that promise, bringing an aggressive suit against Trump for overstating the value of his assets on loan and insurance applications, using an unprecedented interpretation of a broad statute to litigate a “fraud” from which the victims suffered no harm.
“No harm”? Uh, really? Over and over again, Trump massively overvalued his properties, worth, according to him, hundreds of millions of dollars above their previously stated values, as described in this article in Wikipedia. Among other things, Trump claimed that his own luxury apartment, in (of course) Trump Towers, covered some 30,000 square feet, when in fact it was about 10,000. Trump set the value of the property at $200 million, but, according to less biased observers, the true value was less than $100 million, according to capitalist tool Forbes Magazine. James claimed that, thanks to this and other fraudulent statements, Trump had avoided paying between $85 and $150 million in interest on loans, interest that he would have/should have paid if he had obeyed the law and filed honest statements, thus depriving the too-trusting banks who did business with him of tens of millions of dollars in profit, while reaping advantages over his sucker competitors who didn’t cheat when evaluating their collateral.
There is no doubt that both James and presiding Judge Arthur Engoron abused their authority in their zeal to “get Trump.” But there’s also no doubt that Trump massively abused the law to his own profit and his lenders’ loss by his deliberately dishonest evaluations. If you read “Short Circuit”, a weekly collection of summaries of (usually) federal appeals court decisions (usually criminal), you can find that prosecutorial and even judicial misbehavior can be no bar to conviction if the evidence is there, and, in my opinion, the evidence is there for Trump, and, since the New York appellate court has ordered a retrial, we should get, in my expectation, a judgment against Trump free from bombast and overreach—except on Trump’s part, of course. I also offer it as my opinion that Megan, when she said “no harm” was suffered thanks to Trump’s lies, was either lying herself or too anxious to make a point to bother consulting, you know, the facts.
If Megan wants to talk about “lawfare”, and she does, here’s the “lawfare” she should be talking about: The utterly disgraceful failure of the Republicans in the House and Senate to act to first impeach and then convict Donald Trump for the crime of sedition for the events occurring on Jan. 6, 2021,1 failures “trumped”, so to speak, by the utterly disgusting decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court rewriting (rewriting and thus destroying) the U.S. Constitution in both Trump v. Anderson and Trump v. United States.
People support Trump because they are afraid of something. They want “protection”, protection without scruple or constraint. I don’t know what Megan is afraid of, but she sure is afraid of something. And it’s turning her into a liar.
1. Immediately after Jan. 06, the Democratically controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to take up the bill of impeachment. Then, in the new Congress, the House impeached Trump again, but the Senate refused to take up the bill on the grounds that Trump was out of office, a shameless ploy to avoid responsibility. Congress has complete control over the impeachment process (the Chief Justice presides over the Senate trial, but as the "presiding officer", rather than a judge, and the Senate itself has the power to overrule him), and a conviction, I believe, would never have been overturned by the Supreme Court, however much the “Shameless Six”, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, would have wanted to, because of the outrage such a disgracefully partisan ploy would have provoked.
