A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Cuts Would Put IG Office Out of Business
In a move that smacks of retaliation, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte is moving to slash next year’s budget for the agency’s inspector general’s office by more than 60% — after it was involved in an earlier investigation of him.
The surprise draconian cuts to the IG’s office would eviscerate its ability to conduct investigations, IG staff told Congress in a letter this week: “We will be forced to reduce staffing by approximately 70-80% in FY 2027, which will result in the discontinuance of essentially all criminal investigations conducted by our Office of Investigations.”
(Senate Democrats sent a letter to Pulte yesterday demanding that he restore funding for the IG’s office and also demanded his resignation.)
The shock budget cuts are just a continuation of a retaliation campaign by Pulte against internal watchdogs that’s been going on for a year.
Pulte, who also serves as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has had an unusually high profile in Trump II for someone in his position, largely because he led the charge to use bogus claims of mortgage fraud to retaliate against Trump foes, like Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Fed Gov. Lisa Cook. With ready access to the president and poster boards often in hand, Pulte offered Trump what he already wanted: a tool of retribution.
Pulte’s mortgage fraud jihad resulted in an internal investigation of Pulte himself over whether he improperly obtained mortgage records of high-profile Democrats officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Wall Street Journal reported in November:
Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.
That group elevated the probe about the James documents to the more senior Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Pulte heads, the people said. The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.
To summarize, Fannie Mae investigators found enough of concern to bring in higher-ups at the FHFA IG’s office, which took them seriously enough to forward the concerns to federal prosecutors pursuing James.
“The FHFA acting inspector general sent the office the report at least in part because it could be considered material information for James’s defense in the case, one of the people said,” according to the WSJ.
You already know what happened next: James was indicted for mortgage fraud last October in the Eastern District of Virginia by then-acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. The indictment was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge because Halligan was unlawfully appointed as U.S. attorney. Subsequent efforts by Halligan to indict James were rejected by two different grand juries.
The fallout from that episode was swift and severe.
Joe Allen, the FHFA acting inspector general who sent the internal investigation to prosecutors, was asked to step down, the WSJ reported. Around the same time, the administration fired about a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit.
The pattern of retaliation is clear. But there’s a more recent wrinkle.
Last week, the WSJ — which you can see has been all over the Pulte story for many months — reported that Pulte hadn’t just targeted Democrats’ mortgages. He’d also examined the mortgages of Todd Blanche!
Blanche and Pulte have been nemeses, for reasons that seem pretty obvious even from the outside looking in. Pulte — a nonlawyer — was stoking Trump’s sense of vengeance with spurious promises of prosecutions that Blanche was stuck with having to try to make happen.
As it was described to WSJ: “Some officials believed Pulte had been trying to collect information on Blanche and others to undermine them and pressure them to more quickly pursue the investigations, the people said.” Pulte denies improperly pulling any internal files.
As if that wasn’t enough, DOJ began its own inquiry into whether Pulte and other officials had “inappropriately shared information about the Justice Department’s investigation into Schiff with those who weren’t authorized to be part of it,” the WSJ reported.
I was immediately intrigued by the anonymous sourcing of the WSJ story. Who would have been in a position to learn that Pulte had targeted Blanche? I came up with two likely candidates: the FHFA IG via Fannie Mae’s investigators and DOJ through its own investigation of the leaks against Schiff.
But that doesn’t mean that the FHFA IG dropped the dime on Pulte to the WSJ. Remember: The FHFA IG already gave the results of its Pulte investigation to DOJ a year ago in the James case. So DOJ was in a position to know in either instance.
Either way, it’s quite a coincidence that a week after that revelation Pulte is taking another retaliatory swing at the FHFA IG and basically trying to put it out of business.
Judge Drives a Stake Thru the Heart of Trump’s US Attorney Scheme
In a major decision that thwarts President Trump’s scheme to appoint loyalist federal prosecutors in blue states, a federal judge ruled that the president cannot fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian issued a preliminary injunction restoring the court-appointed Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney in Seattle. In his order, Bastian concluded:
Allowing the President to fire a court-appointed U.S. Attorney would upend the framework created by the Constitution and the statutory framework, which together balances the President’s right to appoint and the Senate’s right to confirm. Allowing the President to fire a court-appointed U.S. Attorney also eliminates the incentive to nominate a candidate that can be conferred by the Senate—in other words, bypassing the requirement that the Executive and Legislative branches work together to nominate and confirm the U.S. Attorney.
The Trump DOJ quickly moved to appeal the preliminary injunction order.
Judge Orders Inquiry Into DOJ in Broadview 6 Case
U.S. District Judge April Perry has commenced an inquiry in the conduct of the Trump DOJ in the Broadview 6 case. She named University of Chicago law professor William Baude, a former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts, as a friend of the court to take an adversarial position to the Justice Department, since the underlying criminal case has been dismissed and the former defendants cannot play that role.
Good Read
Michael Lewis in WSJ: the Lone Security Guard Who Resisted DOGE
Thread of the Day
The Florida Senate race is competitive enough for the vice president to be campaigning there in person, and spewing racist and xenophobic garbage against the Democratic nominee:
Trump’s Post-Election Plan for Bombing Iran Leaves GOPers Exposed
President Trump’s stated plan to delay the resumption of large-scale bombing of Iran until after the midterms is a not-very-well-concealed effort to protect Republicans up for reelection from the political consequences of the unpopular war.
The size and scale of the bombing campaign planned for late November has forced the Pentagon to begin taking active measures to deploy sufficient manpower and materiel to the Middle East, the WSJ reports:
- The USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier deployed from San Diego on Sunday and will be the third carrier strike group in the Middle East when it arrives in late November.
- The USS Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group also deployed from California this week, with Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and will be the second such group in the Middle East when it arrives.
Another way of looking at this is that the threat to resume bombing is a negotiation tactic. The newly deployed forces will eventually relieve existing forces, but their arrival in theater means for a time they U.S will have a particularly robust force with which to either carry out renewed bombing or present a credible threat to do so.
Judge Demands OLC Memo on Boat Strikes
In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of Manhattan ordered the Trump administration to provide him with the Office of Legal Counsel memo that provides the legal justification for the lawless high seas campaign of strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats.
The order comes in a lawsuit brought by legal groups to enforce their FOIA request for the memo, which the administration is fighting against releasing publicly.
Noting the irony of the administration touting the memo to justify its conduct while refusing to release it, Judge Engelmayer wrote: “The agency defendants cannot claim surprise from this consequence of the Executive Branch’s repeated public statements embracing the OLC Memo—and it only—as setting out the legal parameters for the boat strikes.”
See You Back Here Monday
Check out Morning Memo playlists on Spotify and YouTube.
News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Not a cat pic
And I’m frist!!!
Well after all who needs a pesky IG anyway?
… … … … … .
Cuts Would Put IG Office Out of Business
In a move that smacks of retaliation, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte is moving to slash next year’s budget for the agency’s inspector general’s office by more than 60 percent — after it was involved in an earlier investigation of him.
You have to get up pretty early in the afternoon to do that.
No fatties, beardos, or weirdos allowed!
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but here in Southern Arizona, Pulte Homes has a reputation for building crap.