Abbe Lowell Pounds The Table

How did Cook afford to take out three mortgages in a matter of a few months? Most lenders would throw a big red flag at this in general—raises more questions: https://t.co/N4E8F4N9qd

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) August 29, 2025

On Thurssay, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte issued a second criminal referral to the Justice Department for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook:

As Director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency," Pulte wrote in an Aug. 28 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Special Attorney Edward Martin, "I reiterate the referral on August 15, 2025, and provide new information concerning a 3rd property for Lisa D. Cook ('Cook') and what appears to be multiple false representations to the United States Government by Cook while she was a Governor of the Federal Reserve."

In response, Cook's attorney Abbe Lowell said,

This is an obvious smear campaign aimed at discrediting Gov. Cook by a political operative who has taken to social media more than 30 times in the last two days and demanded her removal before any review of the facts or evidence," the attorney asserted in the statement. "Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board.

As the saying goes, If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table. Abbe Lowell is pounding the table. That he would say nothing in the allegations has any relevance to Cook's role at the Federal Reserve is a little like David Hume's claim that if someone throws a brick at a window, it has no relevance to the fact that a brick broke the window.

There's a problem that won't go away in Cook's mortgage applications, notwitstanding they were made roughly a year before she was formally confirmed. According to Reuters,

Cook's annual financial disclosure, filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, shows one mortgage for an investment property and two mortgages for personal residences. All were dated 2021, when the Georgia native was a professor at Michigan State University and before her May 2022 confirmation by the Senate to the Fed Board of Governors.

. . . A public records search identified a $203,000 mortgage in Cook's name in Washtenaw County, Michigan, dated June 18, 2021, and a $540,000 mortgage, also in her name, in Fulton County, Georgia, dated July 2, 2021. The mortgages were originated by the University of Michigan Credit Union for the Michigan property and Bank Fund Credit Union for the Georgia property.

. . . Cook also took out a $361,000 mortgage, originated by Bank Fund Credit Union, for a condo in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 7, 2021, Middlesex County records show. The Cambridge property has a "second home" rider that requires it be held primarily for use by the owner and not regularly rented out.

At this time, according to Wikipedia, Cook was an associate professor of economics at Michigan State University. Glassdoor indicates the salary range for a Michigan State University associate professor is $99,000 to $159,000 per year.

On that salary, she applied for $1.1 million in mortgages over a four-month period. A followup poster on the thread asked,

Regular people would never be able to take out three mortgages! I guess you're special if you're in a position of power?

But of course, she wasn't in a position of power then, she was just an associate professor. Another poster added,

It’s call Fed Gov. leverage… she knew she was on the list and so did the lender.. and in case they didn’t know, I’d bet good money she made sure they were aware.

Ah, the "list". In other words, her nomination was wired well before it took place. Wikipedia helps out, at least a little:

In November 2020, Cook was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Federal Reserve.

Before that,

Cook served as a senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama from 2011 and 2012 — as well as a senior adviser on finance and development in the Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs from 2000 to 2001, under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

She also had longtime ties with the civil rights wing of the Georgia Democrat Party. The specifics of her battle for nomination and confirmation as a Fed governor suggest she'd worked for years to position herself, or been positioned, as a high-profile DEI hire. Back to Wikipedia,

In 2021, Senator Sherrod Brown reportedly pushed the Biden Administration to nominate Cook to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. President Biden officially nominated Cook to be a member of the Board of Governors on January 14, 2022. She is the first black woman on the Federal Reserve's board.

It appears that Sen Brown was her champion throughout the nomination and confirmation process, which began in 2021, and it at least suggests that the mortgage applicatons took place in that context and in that time frame. The comments on the X thread embedded at the top of this post suggest that some form of influence had to have been involved in the mortgage approvals, even if Cook's formal nomination hadn't taken place.

Cook's Senate confirmation battle was lengthy, with no Republicans voting in favor and Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

A court hearing on Cook's motion for a temporary restraining order to keep Trump from firing her as a Fed governor took place yesterday:

Friday’s court argument centered around allegations made by Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Authority Director Bill Pulte. He has claimed that Cook committed mortgage fraud before she became a Fed governor.

Late Thursday, Pulte said he made a "2nd criminal referral" to the Justice Department regarding Cook's mortgages. Pulte said it included "alleged misrepresentations about her properties to the United States Government during her time as Governor of the Federal Reserve."

. . . The Trump administration. . . asked the court to deny Cook's temporary restraining order, saying she offered no defense of the charges in public or private. "Removal for 'cause' is a capacious standard, and one Congress has vested in the discretion of the President," the administration's filing said.

The judge ended the hearing without issuing a decision. The problem I see is that there's plenty of room for more to come out about Cook's mortgage applications and any political influence that may have surrounded them, even during the current court proceedings. Certainly Abbe Lowell's protestations that the mortgages have no relevance to her position as Fed governor seem weak even now, but my sense is that more is yet to come out.