Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Tuesday, fiercely rebutting accusations that he misrepresented facts in mortgage documents and accused him of illegally misusing government databases to baselessly target President Trump’s political opponents.
“Pulte abused his power by searching the databases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, for the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats,” Swalwell’s attorneys wrote in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. “He then used those records to fabricate wild claims of mortgage fraud and submitted them to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
They said Pulte launched his attack on Swalwell at a particularly inopportune time, when Swalwell was launching a campaign for California governor.
Swalwell’s attorneys wrote that Pulte’s attack was “not only a gross misrepresentation of reality” but a “serious abuse of power that violates the law,” violated Swalwell’s right to free speech to criticize the president without fear of retaliation, and violated the Privacy Act of 1974, which they said prohibits federal officials from “using access to private information about citizens as a tool to harm political opponents.”
Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
Pulte has previously defended his work investigating the mortgage documents of prominent Democrats, saying no one is above the law. His recommendation was specifically aimed at Democrats, despite reports of Republicans taking similar action on their mortgages.
Swalwell’s lawsuit is the latest pushback against Pulte’s campaign and is part of growing scrutiny of its unprecedented nature and unorthodox methods — not only from targets of his investigation but also from other investigators, according to one witness.
In addition to Swalwell, Pulte filed mortgage fraud charges with the Justice Department against New York attorney Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Gen. Letitia James and Fed Governor Lisa Cook have both denied wrongdoing and said the accusations were nothing more than political retaliation.
James was criminally charged by an inexperienced and loyal federal prosecutor specially appointed by Trump in Virginia, although a judge later dismissed the case on the grounds that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan was illegally appointed. The judge also dismissed a case against another Trump opponent, former FBI Director James Comey.
Cook’s attorneys lashed out at Pulte in a letter to the Justice Department, writing that his “decision to use the Federal Housing Finance Agency to selectively and openly investigate and target the President’s designated political opponents creates the clear impression that he has been improperly coordinating with the White House to create a tenuous premise for launching these investigations.”
Schiff also lambasted Trump and Pulte for targeting him and other Democrats and cheered the dismissal of the cases against James and Comey, calling it a “victory for the rule of law.”
In recent days, federal prosecutors in Maryland who are investigating the Schiff case have also begun raising questions about the conduct of Pulte and other Trump officials, said Christine Bish, a Sacramento-area real estate agent and Republican congressional candidate who was summoned to Maryland last week to answer questions about the matter.
Pulte accused Schiff of violating laws in Maryland and California by claiming he was his primary residence for mortgage loans. Schiff said he never broke any laws and was always upfront with his mortgage lenders.
She told the Times that Bish has been investigating Schiff’s mortgage records since 2020 and has made multiple submissions about Schiff to the federal government — first to the Office of Congressional Ethics and then to the FHFA whistleblower hotline and the FBI earlier this year.
When Trump later posted one of Schiff’s mortgage documents to his Truth social platform, Bish said she believed it was a document she had filed with the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the FBI because it featured exactly what she had highlighted. She then discovered she had missed a call from Pulte, who was later asked by Pulte’s staff to email Pulte the “complete file” of her work on Schiff.
“They wanted to make sure I sent the entire file,” Bish said.
Bish said she was subsequently interviewed via Google Meet on October 22 by personnel from the FHFA Office of Inspector General and FBI agents. Then she received a subpoena in the mail, which she interpreted as requiring her to travel to Maryland last week. There, she said, she was interviewed again for about an hour by the same official from the inspector general’s office and another FBI agent, and she was surprised that their questions seemed to focus more on her communications with federal personnel than on Schiff.
“They wanted to know if I had talked to anyone else,” she said. “You know, what am I communicating with? Who am I communicating with?”
Schiff’s office declined to comment. However, Schiff’s lawyers have previously told Justice Department officials they have “strong grounds” to investigate Pulte and his campaign against Trump’s opponents, calling it “highly irregular” and “dirty.”
Joe Allen, the acting FHFA inspector general when Bish was first contacted, has since been fired, also raising questions.
On Nov. 19, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) — the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — wrote a letter to Pulte denouncing his investigation as politically motivated, questioning Allen’s firing and demanding documents from Pulte, including any of his communications with the White House.
Swalwell’s attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s lawsuit that he never had a primary residence in California and Washington, D.C., as alleged, nor did he violate any laws.
They accused Pulte of orchestrating an effort to spread the accusations against Swalwell through a vast network of conservative influencers, which they said “hurt Swalwell.” [Swalwell’s] That reputation came at a pivotal moment in his career: the very moment he planned to announce his candidacy for governor of California. “
They said the “widespread release of information about the home where his wife and young children lived” also “put him at greater risk to his safety and caused him significant distress and distress.”
Swalwell said in a statement that Pulte “combed through the private records of political opponents” to “silence them,” which should not be allowed.
“There’s a reason the First Amendment — free speech — takes precedence over all other amendments,” he said.
