Lisa Cook’s legal woes began last summer when President Donald Trump and his allies accused her of mortgage fraud involving a pair of properties she owns, both of which she appears to have designated as her principal residence.
Trump’s announcement that he was firing her over the claims came a week after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in a letter that she claimed two properties — a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a condo in Atlanta — as her primary home addresses within two weeks of purchasing each with financing. Pulte accused her of having “falsified bank documents and property records.”
The Justice Department said at the time that it planned to investigate Pulte’s allegations, but Cook has not been criminally charged with any wrongdoing.
A CNN review of mortgage documents shows that Cook did take out mortgages for two properties, both of which were listed as her principal residence. However, it’s not known why she did so or if she did so intentionally.
Though Cook has pushed back strongly on the fraud claims, to date she has not had a chance to contest them in a formal setting. The federal trial-level judge who ruled in her favor last year said that Trump never indicated that she would “be provided an opportunity to argue that the allegations were untrue or did not merit removal, or invite Cook to submit such evidence.”
Her most fulsome defense against the allegations came in November when her lawyer, Abbe Lowell, sent a letter to the Justice Department urging it to drop its inquiry into the “baseless” claims.
Lowell said the records indicate Cook’s applications were accurate and that officials had “cherry-picked” snippets from them to form the fraud claims. Cook, Lowell wrote, took out mortgages on homes as primary residences because that is where she lived at the time.
In court papers submitted to the justices ahead of Wednesday’s arguments, Cook’s lawyers said she “looks forward to debunking allegations that stem from an investigation launched by a presidential subordinate that has not led to any finding of wrongdoing.”