Trump’s own mortgages match his description of mortgage fraud, records reveal

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

For months, the Trump administration has been accusing his political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.

But years earlier, Trump did exactly what he accuses his enemies of, records show.

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda-style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, promising it would be his primary residence. Just seven weeks later, he took out another mortgage for a neighboring seven-bedroom, marble-floored property, attesting that it would also be his primary residence.

In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in any of the houses, much less used them as his primary residence. Instead, the two homes, which are next door to his historic Mar-a-Lago property, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to news accounts from the time and an interview with his former real estate agent — exactly the kind of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.

At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up and rent them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner, who later was the leasing agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.”

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Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences with different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But the two Trump loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.

“Given Trump’s position in situations like this, he will have to be dismissed or referred to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University and a leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed this type of misrepresentation enough to prevent anyone from serving the country.”

Mortgages for a person’s primary home tend to receive more favorable terms, such as lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or rental investment property. Legal experts said having more than one mortgage on a primary residence can sometimes be legitimate, such as when someone has to move to look for a new job, and other times it can be due to a clerical error. Determining bad intentions on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and experts said lenders have great discretion over the loans they offer to customers. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to purchase the two Florida homes.)

But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that simply having two mortgages on your primary residence is evidence of criminality.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who led the prosecution, said earlier this year: “If someone claims two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer them to a criminal investigation.”

Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked if his mortgages in Florida were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud.

In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “Both of President Trump’s mortgages you reference are from the same lender. There was no fraud. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”

The spokesperson added: “This is another desperate attempt by the left-wing media to disparage President Trump with false accusations” and said: “President Trump has never broken the law, nor will he ever do so.”

The White House did not respond to questions about other documents related to the transactions, such as loan applications, that could shed light on what Trump told the lender or whether the lender made any exceptions for him.

At the time Trump bought the two Florida properties, he was dealing with the debris of high-profile failures at his casinos and hotels in the early 1990s. (He famously recounted seeing a panhandler on Fifth Avenue around that time and telling his partner, “You know, that guy is worth $900 million more than me right now.”) In December 1993, he married model Marla Maples in an opulent ceremony at the Plaza Hotel. And in Florida, he was lobbying local officials to allow him to convert Mar-a-Lago, then a residence, into a private club.

Trump purchased the two homes, both located on Woodbridge Road directly north of Mar-a-Lago, and took out mortgages in quick succession in December 1993 and January 1994. The lender on both mortgages, one for $525,000 and another for $1.2 million, was Merrill Lynch.

Each of the mortgage documents signed by Trump contains the standard occupancy requirement: that he must make the property his primary residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agrees otherwise or there are extenuating circumstances.

But ProPublica could find no evidence that Trump ever lived at any of the properties. 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 only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself.

Trump’s real estate agent, who told local press that the plan from the beginning was to rent out the two satellite homes, was quoted as saying: “Mr. Trump is, in effect, in a position to approve who his neighbors are.”

In the following years, listings appeared in local newspapers advertising each of the houses for rent. At one point in 1997, the larger of the two homes, a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom Mediterranean-style mansion, was listed for $3,000 a day.

Even if Trump broke the law with his two primary residence mortgages in Florida, the loans have already been discharged and the mid-1990s are outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud.

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A spokesman for Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, did not answer questions about Trump’s mortgages.

“It is very unlikely that we have original documents for a transaction from 32 years ago, but generally in private client mortgages the terms of the transactions are based on the overall relationship,” the spokesperson said in a statement, “and the mortgages are not backed by or sold to any government-sponsored entity.”

Trump’s two Palm Beach mortgages bear similarities to loans obtained by political rivals whom his administration has accused of fraud.

In October, federal prosecutors charged New York Attorney General Letitia James over her mortgage. James has been one of Trump’s top targets since he filed a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022.

A central claim in the case that Trump’s Justice Department brought against her is that she purchased a house in Virginia, promising her lender that it would serve as her second home, and then proceeded to use it as an investment property and rent it out. “This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” according to the indictment.

Trump’s Florida mortgage deals appear to have made a more significant misrepresentation, as he claimed those homes would be his primary residence, not his secondary home as James did, before proceeding to rent them out.

James has denied the allegations against her and the case was dismissed last month on procedural grounds, although the Justice Department has been trying to retry her.

The circumstances surrounding Trump’s mortgages are also similar to the case his administration has brought against Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Trump declared he was firing Cook earlier this year over his mortgages as he has tried to bend the traditionally independent agency to his will and force it to lower interest rates. Cook, who denied any wrongdoing, sued to block the firing and continues to serve on the Federal Reserve board as the legal fight continues.

In a letter to Cook, Trump specifically noted that she signed two primary residence mortgages weeks apart, just as records show she did in Florida.

“You signed a document certifying that a property in Michigan would be your primary residence for the next year. Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia indicating it would be your primary residence for the next year,” Trump wrote. “It is inconceivable that you were not aware of your first commitment when making the second.”

He called the loans potentially criminal and wrote, “at a minimum, the conduct in question exhibits the type of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question his competence and reliability.”

The Trump administration has made similar fraud allegations against other political foes, including Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, who have denied wrongdoing.

In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called several homes their primary residences in mortgage deals. rivers. Bloomberg also reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did something similar. (All cabinet members have denied wrongdoing.)

Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has denied that his investigations are politically motivated. “If it is a Republican who is committing mortgage fraud, we will look at it,” he said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’ll look at it.”

So far, Pulte has not publicly made any criminal complaints against Republicans. He did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Trump’s mortgages in Florida.