Wow: Trump Accidentally Accuses Himself of Crimes?!

0:00Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah. A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs. And he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado Registered Agent Anna Noskezi. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

0:35Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though?

1:07No. Is he different? Yeah. A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs. And he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado Registered Agent, Nianna Nuskese.

1:57Michael Popok:attacks to go after Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve to try to get her fired. That's been blocked for now by the United States Supreme Court, but we'll see for how long. Claiming that that's crooked and criminal and should be made, there should be a criminal prosecution referral because she took out two loans from the same lender on two different properties and checked the box for primary residence. And lo and behold, she claims that, he claims that Letitia James, to New York Attorney General, another major political rival of his who successfully obtained a$400 million fraud judgment against him for mortgage fraud, that she committed mortgage fraud by saving$50 a month.

2:34Michael Popok:$50 a month, everybody. She checked a box that said she wasn't going to rent the house out to anybody, and she let some of her family stay there. Oh, the crimes that are being committed. And then points to people like Adam Schiff, who says he has a couple of properties that he shouldn't own, both listed as his primary residence. And lo and behold, that got a lot of investigative reporters thinking, huh, wonder if Donald Trump or anybody in his administration have done the exact same thing. And ProPublica has been on the case from day one. About a month or so ago, I reported that ProPublica had found that at least 20 % of Donald Trump's cabinet, including his treasury secretary, his head of the Department of Labor and the head of the Transportation Department all had exactly the same types of double primary residence mortgage documents, meaning that banks let them check the box for primary to give them a slightly lower mortgage rate, and they took advantage of it.

3:36Michael Popok:Because frankly, it's not a crime. It's not a crime if the banks aren't being defrauded, if they encourage you to check the box, if they want to give you the lower interest rate. That's between the mortgage lender, the banker, his underwriter at the bank, and his God. I mean, if there was any miscommunication on that issue. So that was the first reporting. But now we got brand new reporting that ties it directly to Donald Trump. See, back in 1993 and 1994, when Donald Trump was trying to figure out whether he could live at Mar-a-Lago year round as a residence and hadn't gotten that approved yet because it was a club and he was still living in New York, crushed under the weight of seven or eight hundred million dollars worth of bankruptcy debt.

4:26Michael Popok:Oh, yes. He decided to buy a couple of pieces of property in Palm Beach adjacent to or near Mar-a-Lago, one for about $500 ,000 mortgage and the other for about a million two. And he claimed in those mortgage documents, according to ProPublica, who got a copy of them from the Merrill Lynch bank documents. He claimed that both were going to be his primary residences, that he was going to relocate within the next six months, and he was going to live in both houses as his primary residence. You see the problem already? First of all, he never relocated to Florida, except in 2007. He stayed in New York, or actually 2019 became his permanent residence.

5:10Michael Popok:He always split time between New York, which was his residence in Florida. But he checked the box for this primary residence for two pieces of property. He never lived in either piece of property, according to a real estate agent who helped rent out the properties. Instead, he always rented them out at$2 ,000 and$3 ,000 a day to people that wanted to stay in these investment properties. So Donald Trump, seeing these facts about somebody else would say they are, quoting him, this is deceitful and criminal and crooked. Bill Pulte, who's the Nepo baby that runs Freddie May and Fannie Mac, who went after, on behalf of Donald Trump, Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve, Letitia James, New York Attorney General, Adam Schiff, all for quote-unquote mortgage fraud.

6:03Michael Popok:He said about, for instance, about this type of double primary residence, box checking the way that Donald Trump did it, that that should subject the person to, it's a crime and there should be a criminal prosecution referral. And then he made a prosecution referral to the Department of Justice. Now, Bill Pulte's interesting because even his own parents have committed what he refers to as mortgage fraud, because they claimed a property in Michigan as their primary residence when they really lived in Palm Beach County, Florida the whole time. Now, the Michigan tax collector has gotten back the money for that quote unquote fraud by Bill Pulte's own parents.

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7:58Michael Popok:So I also found that the defense that the Trump administration White House is using actually helps Lisa Cook in her case against Donald Trump. So if you're listening, Lisa Cook's lawyers, Abby Lowell, listen to this one. Because the White House said the following. They said that since the same lender for Donald Trump, Merrill Lynch, was being used for both loans, there could be no defraudation. That's a big word. Defraudation. And it would be illogical for the same lender to have approved the loans and defrauded themselves. And so a fraud case would be illogical. And then, of course, they went off, oh, this is just another leftist attack on Donald Trump, you know, and all that.

8:48Michael Popok:Okay. Now, Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve took out two mortgages, one for her primary residence in Michigan and one for a vacation home in Atlanta, took it out from the same credit union, checked the box because I'm sure she was told to do it by her loan officer to get her the better rate primary residences. She never made Atlanta was always a second home for her. And it is. And she lives in Michigan. But this is the exact same thing that the White House has just said is the defense for Donald Trump. Same lender couldn't defraud themselves. No crime here. Same for Lisa Cook. So if I'm Abby Lowell and Lisa Cook's lawyers, I file an updated set of material to the United States Supreme Court to supplement the record and do it below as well.

9:48Michael Popok:Because the Supreme Court said they're going to hold oral argument about whether Donald Trump can fire Lisa Cook, whether he has the cause to fire her based on these allegations of mortgage fraud unproven. That's going to be front and center in January and an oral argument with the United States Supreme Court, which of course we will follow on Legal AF YouTube channel. Come over there, become a subscriber there as well. I'm going to follow all of this double talk, all of this, all of this don't do as I say, do as I do, whatever the phrase is that Donald Trump and his minions are using to defend his own, apparently his own mortgage fraud.

10:31Michael Popok:The reality is none of this is mortgage fraud. This is all commercially acceptable practices within banks to reward or benefit clients. Underwriting in the bank knows that this isn't the primary residence or knows there's more than one. It's very simple to do a title record search to find out if the person has a second home or not, has a first home or not, is renting out the home or not. There's plenty of ways and due diligence a bank to determine which they're obligated to do, whether there's fraud, because there's no fraud here. I don't think Scott Bessent committed mortgage fraud. I don't think the labor secretary did.

11:12Michael Popok:I don't think, I don't even think Donald Trump did. Certainly it was 40 years ago. But we'll continue to follow it, the complete lack of ethics as Donald Trump uses perfectly acceptable conduct that he himself did to go after his political enemies. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called, wait for it, Morning AF.

11:52Michael Popok:What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

12:11Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah. A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs. And he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado Registered Agent Anna Noschese.