Top Justice Department official Ed Martin has met with prosecutors and investigators throughout the country in recent weeks as he seeks to move forward with mortgage fraud cases against Democratic foes of President Donald Trump.
Martin has conferred, for example, with the top federal prosecutor in Maryland about allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), who is accused by Trump allies of wrongly claiming in a mortgage application that a home he purchased in that state was his primary residence.
Prosecutors have struggled, however, to build viable cases against Schiff and other Trump opponents. Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned Friday under pressure from the White House after prosecutors in his office said evidence did not support bringing such charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Those problems haven’t deterred the president, who publicly declared his targets “guilty as hell” and has insisted they be charged promptly.
“JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED. NOW,” Trump wrote over the weekend in a social media post directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Siebert’s resignation – and increasing pressure on prosecutors in Maryland and other jurisdictions – underscores the administration’s apparent willingness to ignore long-standing rules around criminal investigations to target people perceived to be political opponents.
For decades, Justice Department and FBI guidelines have been designed to prevent misuse of the government’s prosecuting power. Federal guidelines say, for example, that administration officials should not make public comments about cases outside of court, in part because doing so could impugn the reputations of people who may not have done anything wrong.
“Prosecutors are not supposed to be on fishing expeditions,” said Jeffrey M. Cohen, an associate professor at Boston College Law School. “A prosecutor set on investigating someone can very quickly invade someone’s life.”
In the current cases, the toll on the subjects already has been high. Schiff, James and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook each have had to hire defense lawyers, often at hefty rates. Their legal teams have needed to sift through decades of mortgage and personal financial documents to prepare possible defenses.
The subjects have faced public scrutiny on their personal lives, and in some corners, reputational damage – whether or not enough evidence exists to eventually warrant criminal charges.
For Trump and some of his top aides, that might be part of the point.
The president and many of his appointees feel the Justice Department corruptly prosecuted him during the Biden administration. Federal grand juries accused him in two separate indictments of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and of hoarding secret government documents after he left office in 2021 and then obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.
Trump denied any wrongdoing, and neither case had come to trial by the time he returned to the presidency last year. Both were dismissed after the election. In a third case, a state indictment in New York led to a lengthy trial and a guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The criminal cases disrupted Trump’s campaign schedule and, at the time, one person close to Trump, said: “The phrase around here is ‘The process is the punishment.’”
White House officials insist Trump has sought “accountability,” not “retribution” in his return to the White House.
“The president has every right to express how he feels about these people who literally campaigned on trying to put him in jail, who literally tried to ruin his life and ruin his businesses, and he wants to see accountability for those who abused their office and abused their power,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday when asked about Trump’s comments regarding Schiff and James.
Martin, in particular, has expressed openness to using the force of federal law enforcement against people even if formal charges aren’t available.
“Some people did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they cannot be charged, we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed,” Martin said at a news conference in May, when he left his post as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and assumed a position in the Justice Department, where he now has a title of special prosecutor.
While some of the current Justice Department investigations might have legal merit, others have little and would be unlikely to lead to convictions if they were to go to trial, according to legal experts. But the onerous nature of criminal investigations gives the administration incentive to use them against foes.
Prosecuting an individual for mortgage fraud on their personal properties is extremely rare, and the Justice Department typically brings these cases only against large institutions or individuals accused of engaging in widespread fraud.
The current allegations mostly have their roots in accusations by Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). He initially referred James, Schiff and Cook to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, accusing them of wrongly claiming homes as their primary residence to secure a cheaper mortgage.
Since those investigations have begun, Pulte has posted about the investigations on social media, at one point sharing a video of Cook’s apparent home in Michigan with the words “Lisa Cook is Cooked.”
Trump claimed to his millions of followers on social media that Schiff had a “sustained pattern of possible Mortgage Fraud,” without providing any evidence. Martin, who is overseeing the investigations, was seen by a reporter posing for a photo outside James’s home in Brooklyn. That stunt drew ire from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has grown frustrated with Martin’s handling of the investigations, according to one person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss pending cases, said Martin appears to have scant evidence showing that the alleged wrongdoing was anything more than paperwork errors. The legal threshold to prove fraud would require Martin to prove that the defendants intentionally made false statements on applications to secure better mortgage rates.
Schiff, Cook and James have each separately denied any wrongdoing.
“Suddenly the public knows all about things at a very, very early stage before there’s been any sufficient predication to charge a case or any assessment whether a case should be charged,” said Gary Restaino, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona who served under President Joe Biden. “That’s a real problem.”
Schiff, who helped lead Trump’s first impeachment and later the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said that “just the smear, just the mere allegation,” gives the administration part of what it seeks.
“The president wants to send a message that he can go after anyone he wants,” Schiff said in an interview.
He pointed to Trump’s statement during an event in the Oval Office in July that “whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people.”
Those comments captured the president’s mindset, he said.
“That’s where he is,” the senator said. “And it’s part of the broader campaign to try to intimidate and silence his critics.”
In recent weeks, media outlets have reported that public records indicate that multiple Trump administration officials have also seemingly listed more than one property as their primary residence – allegations similar to those that have led to the criminal investigations against the three Democrats. The White House denied the allegations.
“Dishonest media reports about Trump administration officials have tried to portray wrongdoings where there are none,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.
The Justice Department declined to say whether it was looking into those officials.
The FHFA does not appear to have referred any of those people to the Justice Department to be investigated