For months, the Trump administration has accused political opponents of mortgage fraud by claiming multiple primary residences.
President Donald Trump accused one of his opponents of doing so as “deceptive and potentially criminal.” He called for another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and urged the Attorney General to take action.
But records show that years earlier, Mr. Trump was doing exactly what he is accusing his opponents of doing.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage on a “Bermuda-style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, promising it would be his primary residence. Just seven weeks later, he secured a new mortgage on a seven-bedroom, marble-floored adjoining property that would become his primary residence.
In fact, Trump, then a New Yorker, apparently never lived in either house, much less used it as his primary residence. Instead, two homes adjacent to his historic Mar-a-Lago mansion were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporary news reports and interviews with longtime real estate agents, exactly the kind of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.
At the time of the purchase, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the president “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress it up lavishly and rent it out every year.” Shirley Weiner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner and later herself a leasing agent for two properties, told ProPublica in an interview: “They were rentals from the beginning.” “President Trump has never lived there,” added Weiner, who has worked with the Trump family for years.
President Trump listed both homes as rentals, even though he signed mortgages pledging he would live in each home. Palm Beach Daily News (via Newspapers.com). Edited by ProPublica.
Mortgage law experts who reviewed ProPublica’s records were struck by the irony of President Trump’s double mortgage. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, like President Trump, is often legal and rarely leads to prosecution. But two of Trump’s loans exceeded the low bar the Trump administration itself set for mortgage fraud, they said.
“Given President Trump’s position on this situation, he would need to either fire himself or turn himself over to the Justice Department,” said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University and a leading expert on mortgage finance. “President Trump has determined that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to prevent someone from serving our country.”
Mortgages for main houses tend to have more favorable terms, such as lower interest rates, than mortgages for second homes or investment rental properties. Legal experts said having multiple mortgages for a primary residence can be legitimate, such as when a person has to move for a new job, or it can be the result of a clerical error. Determining a borrower’s bad faith is key to proving fraud, experts said, and lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer to customers. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to purchase two homes in Florida.)
But in recent months, the Trump administration has argued that just having two mortgages on a primary residence is evidence of a crime.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Commissioner Bill Pruitt, who led the charge, said earlier this year: “If someone is claiming two principal residences, that is inappropriate and we will refer it to a criminal investigation.”
President Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgage was similar to other mortgages he accused of fraud.
In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referring to are from the same lender. There was no fraud. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would consent to fraud.”
“This is yet another desperate attempt by the left-wing media to discredit President Trump with false claims,” the spokesperson added. “President Trump has never and will never violate any laws.”
The White House did not respond to questions about other documents related to the deal, including loan applications that could reveal what Trump told lenders or whether lenders made any exceptions for him.
At the time Trump bought the two Florida properties, he was dealing with the remains of a massive casino and hotel failure in the early 1990s. (About this time, he famously recalled seeing a beggar on Fifth Avenue and telling his companion, “He’s worth $900 million more than me right now.”) In December 1993, he married model Marla Maples in a lavish ceremony at the Plaza Hotel. And in Florida, he wanted local officials to turn his then-mansion, Mar-a-Lago, into a private club.
President Trump purchased two homes, both located on Woodbridge Road just north of Mar-a-Lago, and took out mortgages on them in quick succession in December 1993 and January 1994. The lender on both mortgages, one for $525,000 and the other for $1.2 million, was Merrill Lynch.
Each mortgage document signed by President Trump includes a standard residency requirement: Unless the lender agrees otherwise or there are extenuating circumstances, Trump must make the property his primary residence within 60 days and reside there for at least a year.
However, ProPublica could find no evidence that President Trump lived at either property. Legal documents and federal election records from the time list his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida just a few decades later in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 notes that Trump spent time in Manhattan and Mar-a-Lago itself.
Trump’s real estate agent told local reporters that the original plan was to rent out two satellite homes, but added that “Mr. Trump is effectively in a position to approve who his neighbors are.”
Over the next few years, each rental home was advertised in local newspapers. Sometime in 1997, the larger of the two, a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom Mediterranean Revival mansion, was listed for $3,000 per day.
Even if President Trump violated the law on two primary residence mortgages in Florida, the loans have since been paid off and are well past the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud in the mid-1990s.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage on a “Bermuda-style” home in Palm Beach, promising it would become his primary residence. Just seven weeks later, he secured a new mortgage on a seven-bedroom, marble-floored adjoining property that also proved to be his primary residence. Retrieved from ProPublica
A spokeswoman for Bank of America, now owned by Merrill Lynch, did not respond to questions about Trump’s mortgage.
“Although it is highly unlikely that the original transaction from 32 years ago exists, typically in private customer mortgages, the terms of the transaction are based on the overall relationship,” the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that “the mortgage is not backed by or sold by any government-sponsored entity.”
Trump’s two Palm Beach home loans bear similarities to loans taken out by political opponents that the Trump administration has accused of fraud.
In October, federal prosecutors indicted New York State Attorney General Letitia James over mortgage issues. James has been one of Trump’s top targets since filing a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022.
The central allegation in the lawsuit filed against her by the Trump Justice Department is that she bought a house in Virginia, promised a lender it would serve as a second home, and then continued to use it as an investment property and rent it out. “This misrepresentation enabled James to obtain favorable financing terms not available for investment properties,” according to the indictment.
President Trump’s Florida mortgage agreements appear to have made even more material misrepresentations, with Trump claiming that these homes were not second homes, like James’s, but would be primary residences before being rented.
Ms. James denies the charges against her, and the Justice Department is seeking to re-indict her, but the case was dismissed last month over procedural issues.
The situation surrounding President Trump’s mortgages is similar to the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
President Trump announced earlier this year that he would fire Cook over his mortgage problems. Mr. Cook was trying to bend a traditionally independent government agency to his will and force lower interest rates. Mr. Cook has denied any wrongdoing, but has filed a lawsuit to block his firing and remains on the Fed’s board amid the ongoing legal battle.
In his letter to Cook, Trump specifically noted that she had signed two major mortgages within a few weeks — just as he did in Florida, records show.
“You signed a document certifying that a property in Michigan will be your primary residence for the next year. Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia stating that it will be your primary residence for the next year,” Trump wrote. “It’s inconceivable that you didn’t know about your first appointment when you made your second appointment.”
He wrote that these loans may be criminal, and that “at a minimum, the conduct in question indicates some kind of gross negligence in financial transactions and calls into question your competency and trustworthiness.”
The Trump administration has made similar fraud charges against other political opponents, including Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of whom have denied wrongdoing.
In September, ProPublica reported that three Trump administration cabinet members had multiple homes as their primary residence in their mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did the same. (All ministers deny wrongdoing.)
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Pruitt denied that his investigation was politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to investigate,” he said. “If it’s the Democratic Party, we’re going to consider it.”
So far, Pruitt has not publicly filed criminal charges against Republicans. He did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about President Trump’s Florida mortgage.
