In a fierce rebuttal to allegations that he had criminally misrepresented facts in his mortgage documents, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Tuesday, accusing him of criminally misusing government databases to baselessly attack President Trump's political opponents.
“Pulte has abused its position by searching the databases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – two government-sponsored companies – for private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats,” Swalwell's lawyers wrote in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, DC. “He then used those records to concoct fanciful allegations of mortgage fraud, which he forwarded to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
They said Pulte launched his attack on Swalwell at a particularly inopportune time, just as Swalwell was launching his campaign for California governor.
Pulte's attack, Swalwell's lawyers wrote, “was not only a gross mischaracterization of reality” but “a gross abuse of power that violated the law,” infringing on Swalwell's free speech rights to criticize the president without fear of retaliation and violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which they said prohibits federal officials from “leveraging their access to citizens' private information as a tool to harm their political opponents.”
Pulte, the FHFA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
Pulte has previously defended his work investigating mortgage documents from prominent Democrats, saying no one is above the law. His references have been directed exclusively at Democrats, despite reporting that Republicans took similar actions regarding their mortgages.
Swalwell's lawsuit is the latest backlash to Pulte's campaign and part of growing scrutiny over its unprecedented nature and unorthodox methods, not only from the targets of its investigations but also from other investigators, according to a witness.
In addition to Swalwell, Pulte has referred mortgage fraud allegations to the Justice Department against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a New York attorney. Gen. Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who have denied wrongdoing and suggested the allegations amount to little more than political retaliation.
James was criminally charged by a loyal and inexperienced Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Virginia, although a judge has since dismissed that case on the grounds that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed. The judge also dismissed a case against former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump opponent.
Cook's lawyers sharply criticized Pulte in a letter to the Justice Department, writing that his “decision to use the FHFA to selectively – and publicly – investigate and target the president's appointed political enemies gives rise to the unmistakable impression that he has been inadequately coordinating with the White House to fabricate flimsy predicates to launch these investigations.”
Schiff also criticized Trump and Pulte for attacking him and other Democrats, and applauded the dropping of the cases against James and Comey, calling it “a triumph of the rule of law.”
In recent days, federal prosecutors in Maryland, where Schiff's case is being investigated, also began asking questions about the actions of Pulte and other Trump officials, according to Christine Bish, a Sacramento-area real estate agent and Republican congressional candidate who was summoned to Maryland to answer questions about the matter last week.
Pulte has alleged that Schiff violated the law by claiming primary residence for mortgages in both Maryland and California. Schiff has said he never broke any laws and was always forthcoming with his mortgage lenders.
Bish has been investigating Schiff's mortgage records since 2020 and had repeatedly submitted documents about Schiff to the federal government: first to the Office of Congressional Ethics and then, earlier this year, to an FHFA tip line and the FBI, he told The Times.
When Trump later posted one of Schiff's mortgage documents on his Truth Social platform, Bish said she believed it was one she had submitted to the FHFA and the FBI, because it was highlighted exactly as she had highlighted it. Then he saw that he had missed a call from Pulte, and later Pulte staff asked him to email them “the complete dossier” he had put together on Schiff.
“They wanted to make sure I had sent the complete file,” Bish said.
Bish said she was subsequently interviewed via Google Meet on Oct. 22 by someone from the FHFA inspector general's office and an FBI agent. He then received a subpoena in the mail that he interpreted as requiring him to be in Maryland last week. There, she was interviewed again, for about an hour, by the same official from the inspector general's office and another FBI agent, she said, and she was surprised that their questions seemed more focused on her communications with people in the federal government than on Schiff.
“They wanted to know if I had been talking to anyone else,” he said. “You know, what did I communicate? Who did I communicate with?”
Schiff's office declined to comment. However, Schiff's lawyer had previously told Justice Department officials that there was “ample grounds” for them to launch an investigation into Pulte and his campaign targeting Trump's opponents, calling it a “highly irregular” and “sordid” effort.
The FHFA's acting inspector general at the time Bish was first contacted, Joe Allen, has since been fired, which has also raised questions.
On Nov. 19, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a letter to Pulte denouncing his investigations as politically motivated, questioning Allen's firing, and demanding documentation from Pulte, including any communications he had with the White House.
Swalwell's attorneys wrote in Tuesday's lawsuit that he never claimed primary residence in either California or Washington, D.C., as alleged, and that he had not violated any laws.
They accused Pulte of orchestrating a coordinated effort to spread the allegations against Swalwell through a vast network of conservative influencers, who they said had “damaged [Swalwell’s] reputation at a critical moment in his career: the same moment he had planned to announce his campaign for governor of California.”
They said the “widespread publication of information about the home where his wife and young children reside” had also “exposed him to increased security risks and caused him significant distress and distress.”
Swalwell said in a statement that Pulte has “reviewed the private records of political opponents” to “silence” them, which should not be allowed.
“There is a reason why the First Amendment – freedom of speech – comes before all others,” he said.
