SEPTEMBER 2025 – The non-profit DC news outfit ProPublica doesn’t get enough credit – it quietly uncovers timely and relevant stories, and then must wait for bigger news outfits to pick up their work to get much attention. Three reporters at ProPublica – Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski – ran with a piece on Sept. 4 reporting that a mortgage data company and other records indicated that Trump cabinet members, at least three in all, had filed mortgage applications claiming more than one primary residence. The three cabinet members named are the Labor Secretary, the Transportation Secretary and EPA Administrator. The reason all that is relevant now, of course, is that the Trump Administration has been trying to force the removal of Fed Governor Lisa Cook on that very charge: That she allegedly lied on a mortgage application. The report goes fairly gently on the administration:
Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media.
So far, and to the best of our knowledge, none of the major news outfits have picked up the story – a story that is well researched, and provides more evidence of wrongdoing than the White House provides in its claims against Cook.
It’s a September Rosebud winner.
Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-cabinet-mortgage-fraud