Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook attends the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 2025 Jackson Hole economic symposium, “Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy” in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, U.S., August 23, 2025.
Jim Urquhart | Reuters
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Thursday night said that he had filed a second criminal referral against Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, whom President Donald Trump is trying to fire.
Pulte said in a post on X that the new referral relates to a mortgage on a third property of Cook’s “and alleged misrepresentations about her properties to the United States Government during her time as Governor of the Federal Reserve.”
Earlier Thursday, Cook sued Trump, asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block the president from removing her from the board of the central bank.
Trump earlier in the week cited the first criminal referral Pulte made against Cook, which related to purported false claims on mortgage applications for two homes, in a letter notifying her that he was firing her.
Pulte has acted as an attack dog on Trump’s behalf against the Fed, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and Cook in recent weeks. Trump for months has demanded, without success so far, that the central bank cut interest rates.
Pulte on Thursday said that in April 2021, “Cook entered a 15-year mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, MA, representing it as her ‘Second Home.’ “.
“Only eight months later, on December 1, 2021, Cook signed an ethics form with the U.S. Government that this property was an ‘investment/rental property,’ ” Pulte wrote.
But “in subsequent filings from 2022 to 2025, Cook consistently listed this property as an investment/rental property, not a second home,” he wrote.
“Representing the property as a second home may have allowed Cook to secure a lower ‘Second Home’ mortgage down payment and rates, as investment properties typically carry higher down payments and higher rates due to increased risk,” Pulte wrote.
He said that Cook allegedly misrepresented her property in Atlanta on disclosure forms from 2022 through 2025 “as her residence, despite evidence suggesting it was being rented out to tenants.”
“Similarly, Cook declared in a 2025 government filing that her Ann Arbor, [Michigan] property was her personal residence, however, we have reason to believe that as of 2025, the Ann Arbor property is being used as a rental property, not a personal residence,” Pulte tweeted.
“These inconsistencies appear Cook made additional, multiple false representations, including to the U.S. Government, regarding the status of her mortgages and properties.”
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