Donald Trump Accuses Adam Schiff of Mortgage Fraud

President Donald Trump and Sen. Adam Schiff are in a war of words online over the senator’s real estate holdings.

On Tuesday, the president accused the California senator of committing mortgage fraud by intentionally misleading lenders about his primary residence being in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., rather than in California, The Los Angeles Times reported. Schiff allegedly did so to “get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America,” the president said on Truth Social.

In response, Schiff brushed off the president’s accusations as nothing more than words of revenge.

“Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason. So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown. And this baseless attempt at political retribution won’t stop me from holding him accountable. Not by a long shot,” the senator wrote on X. “This is just Donald Trump’s latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies. So it is not a surprise, only how weak this false allegation turns out to be.”

Schiff went on to claim that the “smear” was done to “distract” from the heightened attention around Trump’s purported connections to late financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump cited an investigation by the Fannie Mae “Financial Crimes Division” as his source for the information about Schiff’s alleged mortgage fraud. A memorandum from Fannie Mae investigators to William J. Pulte, the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency director that Trump himself appointed, does not accuse Schiff of mortgage fraud, according to the L.A. Times.

The document noted that investigators had been asked by the FHFA inspector general’s office for loan files and “any related investigative or quality control documentation” for Schiff’s homes. The investigators said they found that Schiff had, at times, named both his home in Potomac, Maryland and Burbank, California, as his primary residence.

That, they said, means that Schiff and his wife Eve “engaged in a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020. Still, the investigators did not conclude that a crime had been committed and did not mention the word “fraud” in the memo.

— Chris Malone Méndez