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“I’m looking at the Fannie Mae builder data and with the top three homebuilders we buy EASILY over $20 billion in THEIR LOANS!” he posted to X in early October.
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In a brief statement, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which Pulte leads, did not address questions from the AP, but said the agency “requires its regulated entities to carry out their operations in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
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Fannie Mae said it takes “compliance with the law very seriously and we have a rigorous program to ensure we follow all laws and regulations.”
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Pulte and Smith did not respond to requests for comment.
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Currying favor with the president
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Since his appointment to lead the FHFA, Pulte has sought to ingratiate himself with Trump. The 37-year-old scion of a homebuilding company fortune, Pulte has cultivated a reputation as a hyper-online millennial with a thirst for recognition and a desire to please the president. He and his wife also donated about $1 million to Trump’s campaign, records show.
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When Trump sought to oust Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell, Pulte became a leading attacker, routinely taking to X, formerly Twitter, where he has over 3 million followers, to excoriate the central bank leader.
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On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that some Fannie Mae ethics and oversight officials who were fired last month had been investigating whether Pulte improperly obtained mortgage information for James, who was charged last month with bank fraud after Pulte sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department. She said the charges, which she denies, are politically motivated.
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Pulte’s power over the mortgage lending industry is unusual. Not long after his Senate confirmation, he appointed himself chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which both hold trillions of dollars in assets. The companies serve as a crucial backstop for the home lending industry by buying up mortgages from individual lenders, which are packaged together and sold to investors.
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The three competing roles present the potential for a conflict of interest that is detailed in emails reviewed by AP. Like many matters of public policy in Trump’s Washington, it appears to have begun with a social media post.
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In early October, Trump criticized the homebuilding industry, which he likened to the oil-market-dominating cartel OPEC.
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“They’re sitting on 2 million empty lots, A RECORD,” the president posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. “I’m asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get Big Homebuilders going.”
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“On it,” Pulte posted in response on X.
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Sensitive data was gathered
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He turned to Smith, who in her brief tenure at Fannie Mae had become a trusted Pulte ally whose work portfolio transcended the boundaries dividing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHFA, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
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Soon, a team at Fannie Mae was overseeing an effort to pull together a tranche of mortgage data, according to emails reviewed by the AP. Smith played a central role and shared the confidential lender-level pricing information with Freddie Mac, which set off alarms at both companies, according to the emails. A spokesman for Freddie Mac declined comment.
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In the Oct. 11 email to Smith, Evans, the Fannie Mae mortgage executive, also added others to the email chain because they “were involved with this week’s efforts to compile this information” and he wanted to “make sure you do not exacerbate this issue.”
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