After a nearly three-week absence, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte returned to Fox's airwaves on September 26 for a lengthy softball interview with Trump ally and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, rehashing since-debunked accusations of “mortgage fraud” he previously leveled in his campaign against perceived enemies of President Donald Trump. The appearance came less than two days after Media Matters reported that Pulte had conspicuously vanished from Fox amid reports exonerating targets of Trump’s political retribution campaign.

In an appearance lasting nearly 10 minutes, both Pulte and Bartiromo failed to mention any of the reporting that discredited his claims of mortgage fraud, or that Trump Cabinet officials and even Pulte’s own family members reportedly engaged in behavior similar to the accusations he has made against Trump’s opponents.

Pulte reiterated debunked claims against Fed board member Lisa Cook and Letitia James

During the interview, Pulte said of his allegations against Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, whom Trump attempted to fire over Pulte’s accusation: “We can’t have somebody who’s been credibly accused of mortgage fraud at the Federal Reserve.” 

Except Cook wasn’t “credibly accused” of mortgage fraud.

In late August, Pulte himself accused Cook of “falsifying records to obtain more favorable terms on mortgages” by supposedly designating homes in Georgia and Michigan “as her primary residence.” Pulte used his allegations to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

But in mid-September, Reuters reported information that seemingly exonerated Cook. A September 12 article reported that the Atlanta property was actually declared as a “vacation home,” not a primary residence, and on September 15 Reuters additionally reported that Ann Arbor tax officials said Cook “hasn’t broken rules for tax breaks” on her primary residence there. NBC News further debunked Pulte’s claim, reporting that “public records in Fulton County, Georgia, … show that no tax exemptions available for a primary residence were sought by Cook.”

In the interview, Bartiromo also asked Pulte about reporting that he pressed for the firing of former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik S. Siebert after he did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud. (Pulte had made a criminal referral against James in April.) After Trump ousted Siebert, he was replaced by one of Trump’s legion of former personal lawyers.

Pulte demurred on the question about whether he pressured Trump to replace Siebert and later commented on his allegation against James, but that accusation also seems to have fallen apart based on reporting.

Nowhere in the segment did Bartiromo or Pulte mention reports that Pulte’s relatives and several Trump Cabinet officials have claimed multiple homes as primary residences — the same behavior he has made criminal referrals over for Trump’s targets. This was never mentioned despite Pulte’s insistence that “we call balls and strikes. If we see mortgage fraud, we’re going to report it.”

Throughout the interview, while criticizing Federal Reserve policymaking, Pulte additionally proclaimed that Trump had “crushed inflation” and called for further reductions in key interest rates. In reality, the Fed’s preferred monthly gauge of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, had just been released minutes earlier showing the highest level of PCE inflation in nearly a year and a half, and up by nearly half a percentage point since April. Meanwhile, people who aren’t Trump sycophants explained that the new inflation report was not good news for the president.