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Congressional Democrats are questioning the legality of the Trump administration’s purge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s boards, in which the newly appointed head of their federal regulator — housing scion Bill Pulte — was installed as the chair of both companies.
In an April 15 letter to the inspector general who oversees Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, 10 prominent Senate Democrats also asked for more details on “abrupt and sizable” workforce reductions at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the recent firing of more than 100 Fannie Mae employees accused of fraud.
The grandson of PulteGroup Inc. founder William J. Pulte, Pulte was confirmed by the Senate on March 13 as Trump’s nominee to lead the FHFA. Four days later, the FHFA sent 14 members of Fannie and Freddie’s boards packing and named Pulte the chair of both boards.
Elizabeth Warren
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren and nine of her colleagues Tuesday asked FHFA Inspector General Brian Tomney to determine “whether or not FHFA leadership complied with all relevant federal laws, regulations and agency policies and procedures in its decision making.”
Brian Tomney
Tomney, who has served as the FHFA inspector general since 2022, wasn’t targeted in the Trump administration’s removal of at least 18 inspector generals, which some Democrats say were illegal.
The letter — also signed by Democrats Tina Smith, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Catherine Cortez Masto, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Andy Kim and Kirsten Gillibrand — asked Tomney to assess if workforce reductions at the agency will affect its ability to fulfill its oversight role.
Rep. Maxine Waters, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, was even more blunt in an April 7 letter to Pulte himself, accusing him of having “broken the law by illegally appointing yourself as chairman” of Fannie and Freddie’s boards.
Maxine Waters
Waters slammed FHFA’s subsequent move to rein in Fannie and Freddie programs aimed at boosting lending in minority communities, saying it “will limit access to lending for first-time homebuyers and other borrowers who have been historically locked out of the market due to systemic and overt discrimination.”
The FHFA, which has been relying primarily on its own and Pulte’s X accounts for media communications, did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment.
Bill Pulte
In an April 9 appearance on Fox News, Pulte said there is an “ongoing investigation” into the issues that led to the firing of more than 100 Fannie Mae employees. He said FHFA discovered “multiple people were working two jobs” — including some who were located in China — and that some employees had received kickbacks for charitable donations.
Waters also took issue with FHFA appointing its general counsel, Clinton Jones, to serve on both Fannie and Freddie’s boards, and demanded that Pulte supply the “names, titles, qualifications, and all business and non-business affiliations” of the other new board members.
Clinton Jones
Jones joined the FHFA in 2019 during the first Trump administration, and was promoted to general counsel in February 2021 — shortly after Biden took office.
The other new additions to Fannie and Freddie’s boards last month included Mike Stucky, a former Pulte Group division president; Tri Pointe Homes Inc. executive Brandon Hamara; and Ralph “Cody” Kittle, a partner at private equity firm RenWave Kore.
Omeed Malik
More recently, on Monday Pulte announced on X that banker and investor Omeed Malik — recently dubbed “MAGA world’s premier financier” by New York Magazine — is joining Fannie Mae’s board of directors.
Another new Fannie Mae board pick — Christopher Stanley, a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — resigned the day after his March 17 appointment.
But Democrats said this week they have ongoing concerns about DOGE’s role in running the FHFA during the second Trump administration.
In their letter to the FHFA inspector general, Senate Democrats asked for details on what access DOGE officials have to FHFA, Fannie and Freddie data, and whether DOGE officials were involved in the decision to purge the company’s boards.
Waters and Senate Democrats also want to know more about news reports of staffing reductions at FHFA and Fannie Mae.
We exceeded DOGE’s expectations at U.S. Federal Housing (FHFA), with an over 25% reduction in the Agency’s active workforce. We’re consolidating divisions to focus on building more homes and strengthening safety and soundness.
— Pulte (@pulte) April 8, 2025
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a critical role in our nation’s mortgage market and collectively guarantee roughly 50 percent of home loans,” Senate Democrats said. “Clarity in [their] operations is therefore essential to the stability of the housing finance system.”
David Dworkin
National Housing Conference CEO David Dworkin, a centrist advocate for affordable housing stakeholders, last month called Jones “a highly respected regulator and policy expert” whose appointment to the mortgage giants’ boards “was reassuring to many who expressed concern over which senior FHFA staff would be retained.”
And while Dworkin said he’s not aware of another instance of a regulator assuming the chairmanship of a regulated board, as a practical matter, “the FHFA Director has been the de facto board chair of both companies since they were put into conservatorship in 2008.”
More recently, Dworkin said the National Housing Conference is working with Pulte and Trump’s Housing Secretary, Scott Turner, to further the Trump administration’s stated goals of lowering the cost of housing and expanding housing supply.
In an April 13 column, Dworkin said he recently met with Turner to discuss ways Opportunity Zones can help build more affordable housing, and using AI to simplify housing choice vouchers.
“We’ve also gathered dozens of the most knowledgeable and influential housing experts to discuss how to effectively recapitalize and release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 16 years of conservatorship,” Dworkin said, in light of a proposal to create a U.S. sovereign wealth fund and seed it with the Treasury Departments warrants for Fannie and Freddie stock.
Dworkin said that to understand Pulte’s April 8 assertion that FHFA is “turning around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, slowly but surely,” it’s important to understand “the degree of regulatory supervision that has micromanaged nearly every business decision” at the companies at every level.
“It’s a common refrain from lenders that they cannot get timely answers to some of the most routine questions,” Dworkin wrote. “As Pulte moves to ‘run these companies like a business,’ he is moving regulatory supervision to the top as he prepares the companies for release from conservatorship. It’s easy to mistake the missive as pejorative, but in fact, he understands that you can’t run a business unless you match an employee’s responsibility with the appropriate amount of authority and accountability.”
Together, Fannie and Freddie employ more than 16,000 workers and generated 2024 profits totaling $28.9 billion, boosting their combined net worth to $154.3 billion.
To succeed in meeting Trump administration’s goals, Dworkin said, Pulte and Turner “will have to be disruptors of what has not worked, but they must do so without being disruptive of what does. That won’t be easy, and will require broad consultation with stakeholders at every step of the way, while moving forward at a deliberate pace.”
“If we get it wrong, we could do damage that could take a generation to recover from,” he concluded.
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