Trailer Park Slum Lord: The Generational Corruption of Bill Pulte
The thing about Bill Pulte’s corruption is that a fair number of Republicans seem have it in for him, too (as laid out in this Politico piece in September).
That may help to explain the 3,000 word profile airing the family’s dirty laundry while detailing that Pulte’s closest ties to his family’s developing empire are to some decrepit trailer parks.
He did not issue press releases about the five mobile home parks his companies acquired in Florida for about $3 million in the two years before he was nominated to become the F.H.F.A. director in January.
Recent visits to two of the mobile home parks revealed a broken fence and overflowing trash bins. The dozen or so trailers at the parks were aging. Some had windows covered with faded American flags and cardboard. Duct tape patched torn screens.
Documents show Mr. Pulte was the signatory on a $2 million mortgage taken out on three of the properties in August 2024. The woman listed as an agent on some of the mobile home parks also works in his charitable organization. In January 2024, he told an interviewer on an investing podcast that the “Pulte Family” was buying mobile home parks and planning to revamp them amid a market of rising rents.
In the same interview, Mr. Pulte said he planned to make them into “nice communities.”
But his companies have been slow to make repairs, said residents of three of the parks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
A resident of one property, in Lake Worth in Palm Beach County, said he had gone months without a working stove, despite asking the management company to fix it. Another resident said he had spent $300 to repair his broken air-conditioning unit. Some trailer park leases warn tenants that if they miss rent payments, which are due weekly, “they will be removed for trespassing by the local sheriff!!”
At some properties, rents have been rising. A resident at a mobile home park in Cottondale in the Florida panhandle said in a filing in Jackson County Court this summer that his monthly rent had increased to $950 from $550 after Mr. Pulte’s company took over. At a park in Ruskin, south of Tampa, rents recently rose $100 a month — about 16 percent — to pay for a new dumpster, several residents said.
None of the mobile home properties carry the Pulte family’s name.
One of the quickest ways to taint someone in Trump’s eyes is to make him look squalid.
Meanwhile — and purely by happenstance — the Epstein dump James Comer released to distract from Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking included a document that seems to be Epstein’s side of the split with Trump.
In a February 1, 2019 email first sent to himself (possibly BCCed to someone else?), and then sent to Michael Wolff, Epstein transitions directly from a claim in one of the letters from which Comer was trying to distract — that Trump came to his house a lot while someone Epstein trafficked was there, purportedly Virginia Giuffre — to his description over the fight about the property that Trump would one day launder into cash from Dmitry Rybolovlev, the fight that Trump had also publicly used to explain the split. Much of Epstein’s focus was on his suspicions that Trump didn’t have the money to buy the mansion in the first place and probably didn’t pay taxes on it.
But amid the description, Epstein describes that “his friend pulty the developer” was part of Trump’s bid. If that is Pulte, it would be Pulte’s father who, like Trump’s dad, fronted him in the real estate business. [Update, corrected per this report. h/t DrAwkward]
In Epstein’s mind, then, there’s a tie between Trump’s knowledge he “stole” his spa girl and the fight over the Palm Beach mansion, a fight in which “pulty the developer” played some part.
But all that is in the past.
Let’s move onto concerns about the present and future.
AP reports that an aide to Pulte pulled information on single home mortgage rates and shared it with a competitor. When Fannie executives pointed out this was collusion, they were fired (another part of the explanation for Pulte’s purge last month).
A confidant of Bill Pulte, the Trump administration’s top housing regulator, provided confidential mortgage pricing data from Fannie Mae to a principal competitor, alarming senior officials of the government-backed lending giant who warned it could expose the company to claims that it was colluding with a rival to fix mortgage rates.
Emails reviewed by The Associated Press show that Fannie Mae executives were unnerved about what one called the “very problematic” disclosure of data by Lauren Smith, the company’s head of marketing, who was acting on Pulte’s behalf.
“Lauren, the information that was provided to Freddie Mac in this email is a problem,” Malloy Evans, senior vice president of Fannie Mae’s single-family mortgage division, wrote in an Oct. 11 email. “That is confidential, competitive information.”
He also copied Fannie Mae’s CEO, Priscilla Almodovar, on the email, which bore the subject line: “As Per Director Pulte’s Ask.” Evans asked Fannie Mae’s top attorney “to weigh in on what, if any, steps we need to take legally to protect ourselves now.”
While Smith still holds her position, the senior Fannie Mae officials who called her conduct into question were all forced out of their jobs late last month, along with internal ethics watchdogs who were investigating Pulte and his allies.
This effort seems to stem from Pulte’s response to Trump’s orders to push builders to build more single family homes.
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 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.
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.
In October, Trump criticized the homebuilding industry, which he likened to the oil-market-dominating cartel OPEC.
“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.”
“On it,” Pulte posted in response on X.
That is, Pulte may have abused his overlapping roles running the country’s housing finance in an attempt to solve the fact that he’s not otherwise good at his job.
And so he tried to cheat.
And when caught cheating, he fired the people who caught him.
The fact that Pulte keeps getting caught botching his day job — the one that, when he fails, could tank the entire US if not global economy — has not distracted him from his real love: framing Trump’s enemies.
This time, Eric Swalwell was the target.
A top housing official in President Donald Trump’s administration has referred California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Justice Department for a potential federal criminal probe, based on allegations of mortgage and tax fraud related to a Washington, D.C., home, according to a person familiar with the referral.
He is the fourth Democratic official to face mortgage fraud allegations in recent months.
Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged in a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday that Swalwell may have made false or misleading statements in loan documents.
The matter has also been referred to the agency’s acting inspector general, this person said.
“As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me,” Swalwell said in a statement to NBC News.
Perhaps Pulte has a whole portfolio of flimsy claims about Trump’s enemies in a folder somewhere, to deliver up to Trump every time someone, even some Republican, raises real concerns about his basic competence.
Thus far, it seems to have insulated him from any real accountability.
Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, Eric Swalwell, . . .
How many people does it take to certify a class?
“Your Honor, I represent the plaintiffs in the matter of Vocal Critics of Donald J. Trump v. William Pulte and Donald Trump” has a nice ring to it.
As for that folder you mention at the end, that sounds like a lot of work to maintain — work beyond Pulte’s gifts, given what you’ve laid out here. On the other hand, I certainly would believe that Pulte has a folder that he quietly waves around or mentions to certain folks in GOP circles, in the same manner that McCarthy had a list of communists at the State Department. Just the mention of the possibility of such a folder instills fear in those Trump wants to be afraid.
Of course, Trump would really like to see them behind bars, but having his enemies living in fear is a nice second.
I’m looking forward to ANY of these people getting discovery on the various ethics groups and inspector generals that have been fired under Trump. If Pulte goes after enough Trump enemies, they might start looking like a class, and that could improve the legal resources the group has, beyond what each individual has now.
I am VERY selfishly hoping that the James and Comey cases don’t resolve TOO soon before we get a little more visibility into all this.
There’s a sweet spot somewhere just in time for Christmas.
“I’m dreaming of a new Fitzmas,
just like the one I used to know . . .”
It’s lovely weather for a slay ride together with you…
I appreciate the sentiment, but you could never get that class certified. I won’t go into the weeds, but the federal judiciary’s been trying to gut any class actions for decades.
What might work is a mass action. Every injured person is an individual plaintiff.
I was mostly joking, and I’ve seen what you describe with respect to the federal courts and class actions, but still: doesn’t that introductory statement by the plaintiff’s counsel sound nice?
I like the dilemma you paint for Trump – “punt Pulte as a tawdry slumlord, or promote him as a valued minion and accomplice?” Decisions, decisions …
The US Government under Trump is becoming a “vexatious litigant”. It’s as if the government knows it will fail in court but, at least, it can cause victims money, time, and angst.
Reading that long email from Epstein to Michael Wolff makes me happy that I had my cup of coffee before I read it. Wasn’t Epstein’s day job providing advice on sheltering assets for wealthy clients? He would know something about money laundering. Clearly he is suspicious. The New Yorker ran an article about the Trump to Rybolovlev transaction in 2016 and reported that Trump made no improvements when he owned the property.
“Pulty the developer” is Mark Pulte, Bill’s father, who was the third bidder in the auction: https://web.archive.org/web/20211207035254/https://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/story/business/2004/11/16/trump-wins-gosman-mansion-for/6643188007/
Ah, so maybe it was an elbowing move in the bid process. Possibly Pulty pere was going along with Donald till Epstein dropped out. It might make sense for someone to interview the auctioneer before they get hired by Musk or whatever.
That would explain the animus that developed over the deal — not just a “wow, pal you got me on that one, didn’t think you had the balls” kind of memory for Jeffrey. Pulty might even have gotten in on the flip action. I’m sending a tip to Pro Publica.
Ok, so I just squinted and read the small print in the Epstein email about the gosman sale. He was the stalking horse, says he was to get a fee for any sale above his 30M opener. So why did it piss him off? Was he shafted of the fee by Gosman? Did Trump make that part of the sale, just as a gorilla chest-thumping move? And underlyingly, did Epstein tell Trump about his fee arrangement with Gosman, such that he (Trump) knew Epstein would stand to profit from getting beaten out of the sale. And the stalking horse arrangement sounds like Epstein wasn’t really emotionally invested in getting the place, no? It’s all very interesting.
But Epstein calling Pulty Trump’s “friend” in the context of that auction definitely put a “Trump/Pulty tag-team” color to the whole thing. That whole auction paragraph is a treasure trove, even without all the tax-dodging highlights.
Typically a stalking horse or shill involves a kickback from the seller.
There’s a formerly findable connection between Pultes and Teump via the failed Ensenada condo deal.
Could it be that Epstein found out later that Trump knew, in advance, that he could flip the property for twice what he paid? Trump’s approximately $60 million profit dwarfs the stalking horse fee Epstein would get.
I am a small time RE owner, but I have bought, traded, refinanced and developed properties over the years and have been the trustee for my parents estate. As such, I have signed many, many documents. Pages and pages. They go thru them at the title company with tabs for signing or initialing. I can’t really imagine anyone does things untoward unless the title company is somehow crooked. The only time I read every line was during the mortgage finance scams of 2008-09. I made the server (who came to my house, first ever) sit while I read everything because I wanted to make sure there was no adjustable mortgage or anything else hidden in the paperwork. Certainly lawyers like Schiff, Swalwell, James, etc. are not changing the documents at signing. These are all pro-forma. Who is a crook? Pulte. A whole other side of the business. This kind of thing is really disturbing.
“Who is a crook? Pulte.”
Is he, though? He sounds to me like just another sloppy, sociopathic slumlord–someone whose predation should be illegal but isn’t because this is America, the land of opportunity for predators.
Like so many MAGA luminaries, Pulte seems to have nepo-failed his way all the up to the cabinet job he is using a cudgel against Democrats. Is any of that a crime? Not in Trump’s America. But also, sadly, not in America.
For members of Congress, your “primary residence” is a complicated thing. For example, imagine a senator who is married with three school-age kids. You need one residence in your district, and another in metro DC. Some senators or representatives will choose to bring their family to metro DC, and to enroll the kids in school, you have to call that your primary residence (i.e., not a vacation home). Meanwhile, to keep your job, your home in your state has to be considered a “primary residence.”
And that’s if you are trying to do everything right.
But this can also open the door to mischief . . . From the KC Star in Nov 2020 (behind a paywall):
*sigh*
Let’s see: Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, Eric Swalwell, and Josh Hawley. “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong . . .”
Maybe if Schiff, Cook, and Swalwell raised a fist and ran through the halls of Congress this would all go away. Or, you know, not.
Here’s a gift link to the 2020 KC Star Hawley article:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article247260219.html?giftCode=b321eb21cb28d85ea3725f3b238b92f9bd734e93318d83f15499c8b75d2fbd3b
(Nice thing about my subscription to the local (McClatchy) paper—your sign-in works for all 30 McClatchy properties. The ones I use most are major state papers Kansas City Star, Miami Herald, Charlette Observer, and Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, plus the Sacramento Bee for their excellent CA state government coverage, and Idaho Statesman to keep track of my MAGAfied old home state.)
Thanks for that tip about the McClatchy outlets, I’ll rejigger my media spending to see if I can swing that one.
I grew up with the Fresno Bee showing up every afternoon in the newspaper box at the end of our driveway.
The three Bees (Sacramento, Modesto, and Fresno) were known for their extensive network of stringers covering the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. If something was happening, they had someone local on it — those stringers had all the local knowledge and contacts. McClatchy also owned KMJ-TV and KMJ-AM radio (before that kind of media ownership was terminated) which gave some legs to important Valley stories. KMJ-AM is a 50,000 Watt station with a directional antenna array. Being at the bottom of the AM dial (580 KHz), it has a significant coverage area.
Excellent points.
When Rybolovlev bought the mansion from Trump in July 2008 l, Trump told Michael Cohen he just sold property to Putin, per Cohen.
Link to 9/8/20 MSNBC YouTube video with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow; https://youtu.be/sSZAQDWGKO0
Here’s a 12/14/18 article by Rep Speier explaining the deal in context of Trump’s financial distress, Rybolovlev possible need to hide assets during a divorce, and Rybolovlev’s own legal trouble going away after the deal.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Did-Putin-buy-Donald-Trump-13463782.php
I think we now know why Pulte remains while everyone else in the WH allegedly hates him, because he has leverage as well as the perch to make it hurt. I’d also check in on First Draft today, Pulte is in the Confederacy of Dunces post.
Senator Fetterman is wondering why Nate Silver isn’t demanding Convict-1’s reservation since one year ago he was demanding that Joe go for a lot less observed deterioriation. I will state that there is no possibility that Convict-1 resigns because he knows full well that the sins of his maladministration will fall solely on him. Everyone else will wash their hands of the wreckage no matter how gung-ho they were or whether they instigated the policies on their own (looking at you, Noem, Miller, Homan, Bessent, Bondi, Patel, Hegseth, etc.). The courtier press will let them do it to ‘put this behind us’ in another Watergate echo.
And don’t forget Vance. He has all the flexibility of an Olympic gymnast, with none of the strength.