It’s not just Democrats. ProPublica took a look:
The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator and a state attorney general.
Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.
It’s very common. How common?
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.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records.
Here’s Trump’s lackey being confronted with news of Texas GOP criminal Ken Paxton claiming 3 residences as his primary homes:
PULTE: Public officials shouldn't be exempt from scrutiny
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 4, 2025
SORKIN: Speaking of that, Ken Paxton has at least 3 examples of alleged mortgage fraud. Are you looking at that?
PULTE: Unless it's been made public, I'm not going to comment on any specific situation
SORKIN: Why… pic.twitter.com/lqakHlFHUs
Mother Jones took a look at Pulte, the 37 year old Trump bootlicker:
The heir to a real estate and construction fortune, Pulte got his job in the administration about three years after his wife, Diana Pulte, donated $500,000 to a super PAC backing Trump. The donation was channeled through a Delaware shell company, ML Organization LLC, that Bill Pulte controlled. It came at a crucial moment, as the former president was just beginning to get his new campaign off the ground following his reelection defeat and the 2021 Capitol insurrection.
This opaque gift drew a complaint from a watchdog group alleging that Pulte violated campaign finance laws by obscuring the source of the funds. A resulting Federal Election Commission investigation concluded only this year, when the FEC quietly announced that the Trump-controlled PAC had erred by failing to properly disclose that Diana Pulte was the real source of the money. The agency said that Bill Pulte had not broken the law, and it did not accuse Diana Pulte of wrongdoing.
“The FEC looked at the issue and determined that there was no violation by Director Pulte,” an FHFA spokesperson told Mother Jones. “He was 100 percent compliant. Anything else is Fake News, an attempt to smear Director Pulte and distract from serious mortgage fraud. SAD.”
Pulte did not respond to questions about why the donation went through a shell company, if he was involved in the donation credited to his wife, or whether the large donation helped him land his job in the administration.
He also has not addressed an FEC determination that the “contributor” of the funds—Diana Pulte—had incorrectly filled out a form to indicate the money came from an LLC rather than a member of the Pulte family. That looks like the same kind of paperwork sloppiness—in information ultimately provided to the federal government—that Bill Pulte is now harassing Trump foes over.
I would bet that isn’t the only infraction.
Just imagine if Democrats really did “investigate” Republicans the way the Republicans are going after them. Both parties are awash in campaign cash and the consequent corruption. But the Republicans are completely defined by it.