Lisa Cook’s authorized woes started final summer season when President Donald Trump and his allies accused her of mortgage fraud involving a pair of properties she owns, each of which she seems to have designated as her principal residence.
Trump’s announcement that he was firing her over the claims got here every week after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in a letter that she claimed two properties — a house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a rental in Atlanta — as her main dwelling addresses inside two weeks of buying every with financing. Pulte accused her of getting “falsified bank documents and property records.”
The Justice Department mentioned at the time that it deliberate to examine Pulte’s allegations, however Cook has not been criminally charged with any wrongdoing.
A NCS overview of mortgage paperwork exhibits that Cook did take out mortgages for two properties, each of which had been listed as her principal residence. However, it’s not identified why she did so or if she did so deliberately.
Though Cook has pushed again strongly on the fraud claims, to date she has not had an opportunity to contest them in a proper setting. The federal trial-level choose who dominated in her favor final yr mentioned that Trump by no means 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 protection towards the allegations got here 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 mentioned the data point out Cook’s purposes had been correct and that officers had “cherry-picked” snippets from them to type the fraud claims. Cook, Lowell wrote, took out mortgages on properties as main residences as a result of that’s the place she lived at the time.
In courtroom papers submitted to the justices forward of Wednesday’s arguments, Cook’s legal professionals mentioned 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.”