Accountability is the bane of the Trump administration’s shamelessly venal approach to governance. That’s why the administration has willfully attacked the civil servants and laws that exist to hold power accountable.
Still, even as the administration’s dismantling of federal watchdogs may provide temporary reprieve for Trump and his corrupt sycophants, more and more Americans are connecting the dots between the White House’s unscrupulous activity and their pocketbooks.
It’s critical that this moment of public consciousness is not squandered; the stories we’ve tracked across multiple Corruption Calendars—including this edition’s focus on Bill Pulte’s gutting of mortgage fraud investigators and Todd Blanche’s circumvention of ethics restrictions—are ample fodder for an opposition party (well, if we allow ourselves a moment of naivete, perhaps copartisans of Trump as well?) serious about oversight.
Pulte’s Bogus Mortgage Fraud Hunt Leads Him to Gut the Office That Investigates Actual Mortgage Fraud
Last week, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte announced significant cuts to the agency’s inspector general office, which will in effect eliminate the office tasked with helping to oversee the integrity of the US mortgage market, including by investigating mortgage fraud. According to Government Executive’s reporting, the FHFA’s inspector general James Hodge said the agency would have to cut staff by 80%, eliminating the office’s “capacity to effectively conduct criminal investigation of mortgage, bank and other fraud schemes involving the entities FHFA regulates.”
Like so many Trump administration actions, Pulte’s move reeks of petty vengeance. The FHFA IG and federal prosecutors were reportedly investigating Pulte’s own conduct after he accused the president’s enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James, of mortgage fraud. The accusations against Schiff stalled due to lack of evidence, while two grand juries have declined to indict James. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook was also accused by Pulte of mortgage fraud, which Trump has attempted to use as justification for firing Cook (thus far unsuccessfully, but Trump has not given up — just today the White House announced a hearing on the accusations.)
This budget cut is the latest escalation of Pulte’s revenge. It follows Trump’s firing of the former acting FHFA inspector general Joe Allen in November 2025 after he sought to provide “key information” to the office prosecuting James. Allen was also reportedly preparing a letter to Congress regarding the agency’s refusal to cooperate with the OIG.
More recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Pulte also examined Attorney General Todd Blanche’s mortgages during the same period, possibly to “pressure” the Justice Department to take up his bogus fraud referrals.
Given that Pulte’s apparent meddling with the Attorney General’s personal records was only reported last month, we should stay humble and reject the assumption that we know all of the questionable activity that a properly staffed, independent office of the inspector general would have good cause to investigate.
Pulte’s attack follows a well established pattern. During the COVID pandemic, Trump fired several inspectors general, often on Friday evenings — and, as intended, far too many have forgotten about those actions. As with so many of Trump’s destructive and under-appreciated actions during Trump 1.0, the purging of inspectors general has escalated in Trump 2.0. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has fired inspectors general en masse, slashed their budgets, and installed loyalists, some of whom have shifted scrutiny away from their own agencies toward allegations of state-level fraud.
Whatever Pulte’s motive, the harm to ordinary people is real. The cuts are a direct threat to the millions of people who reside in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac-backed homes. In addition to policing the director’s conduct, the FHFA OIG oversees the agency and Fannie and Freddie themselves, for which the FHFA serves as both a regulator and conservator. These two entities are the backbone of the US housing market—together, they back more than $7 trillion in mortgages, amounting to 70% of the whole U.S. market. Fannie and Freddie also have their own internal ethics team, but Pulte has gone after those too. In October 2025, the administration “fired about a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit, removing some guardrails meant to address and head off misconduct.”
Congress created the FHFA in 2008, in the wreckage of the housing crisis fueled by reckless lending and weak oversight, to make sure it never happened again. The IG’s role rooting out real mortgage fraud is central to that mission. But neither Trump nor Pulte care about that. Their dismantling of critical accountability measures leaves communities with one less watchdog guarding the integrity of the housing market.
Attorney General Blanche Promised to Divest His Crypto Holdings. He Gifted Them to His Family Instead.
The Washington Sun reported that Todd Blanche’s six-figure cryptocurrency investments drew scrutiny from Department of Justice ethics officials even as Blanche shut down Biden-era investigations into crypto companies.
According to his financial disclosures, Blanche owned between $158,010 and $470,000 in cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum when he joined the DOJ in early 2025. As part of his ethics agreement, Blanche agreed to divest his crypto assets as well as his other investments in companies such as Pfizer, Tesla, and Coinbase. A disclosure filed months later shows he never sold the crypto assets. Instead, he gifted the four of the crypto holdings to his grandchild and adult children.
Executive branch officials must report their own interests and those of their minor children and spouse on their public financial disclosures. By gifting the crypto assets to his adult children and grandchild, Blanche moved it out of the law’s direct reach. But a family holding hundreds of thousands in crypto still stands to benefit, especially as Blanche directs the DOJ to end “regulation by prosecution” (which is synonymous with “law enforcement”) of the industry. To be clear, the DOJ had been playing a key role investigating the illicit use of crypto. The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which Blanche disbanded, investigated “Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, resulting in a $4.3 billion settlement.”
It’s one more reminder that venality in Washington extends beyond the President and his family to much of his inner circle. His top officials have ties to these industries that want to see executive branch regulatory and enforcement power gutted. While the Trump administration does the bidding of crypto and other predatory industries, everyday people are left more exposed to the scams that the crypto industry is built upon.
FCC’S Approval of Paramount-Warner Bros Merger Hands Gulf Monarchies A Stake Trump-Friendly Media Conglomerate
In a disappointing turn, the coalition of 12 state attorneys general led by California AG Rob Bonta settled their lawsuit opposing the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger last month. With all other hurdles cleared, the merger officially closed this week, handing the Trump-allied Ellison family an enormous media empire that includes CBS, HBO and CNN, after Paramount threatened to leave California if the deal wasn’t approved. The less scrutinized FCC approval of the merger is equally troubling.
FCC chair Brendan Carr is among Trump’s most loyal enforcers, leading the charge to silence Trump’s media critics and pressure outlets the president dislikes. The Carr-led FCC’s approval of the Paramount-Warner Bros merger marks the first time, per a letter by six Democratic Senators, the commission has authorized “a significant ownership stake of an American broadcaster by a sovereign wealth fund.” The foreign funds, which amount to a 49.5% non-voting stake, are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi—countries where Trump’s family business has forged close and lucrative ties. The commission’s lone Democrat, Anna Gomez, decried that “an investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and made.” Americans will now have a huge part of our media ecosystem swayed by the will of repressive foreign governments.
The FCC even approved letting foreign entities own up to 100% of the company’s stock, though voting shares would require additional approval. Given that Larry Ellison’s Oracle is on shaky financial footing, it is plausible that these governments will seek larger stakes. And the FCC has made it clear it will assent.
In Case You Missed These Corruption Hits
- ProPublica reported that Trump’s demand for “a purge of anyone who had ever investigated him” at the DOJ helped kill a sprawling public corruption investigation that reportedly examined whether Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) was involved in a pay-to-play scheme with a top donor.
- Revolver Alert: The Information reported that Sriram Krishnan, a former a16z general partner who recently advised the Trump administration on AI, is raising an AI-focused venture fund targeting around $500 million. Krishnan was recruited to advise the administration by billionaire investor David Sacks, who acted as AI and Crypto Czar and now co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. As Trump himself increases his financial stake in the AI build-out, the line between AI policy and enrichment of Trump insiders is essentially nonexistent.
- The Wall Street Journal reported that Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiance and the ambassador to Greece, sought $100,000 from a donor in exchange for helping resolve his tax and legal troubles.
- Trump’s crypto firm is once again promising to hold a dinner with the President, this time for the top 185 holders of Trump’s meme coin, the Washington Sun reported. According to the Sun, “The winners will be chosen based on a formula that seems designed in part to increase sales of $TRUMP in the next two months.” Earlier this year, Public Citizen found that “Trump’s sprawling cryptocurrency ventures have left investors with at least an estimated $4.7 billion in losses, while Trump himself made at least $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025.”