Fannie Mae officials ousted after sounding alarm on sharing confidential data

Summary

WASHINGTON (AP) — A confidant of Bill Pulte, the Trump administration’s top housing regulator, provided confidential mortgage pricing data from Fannie Mae to a principal competitor, alarming senior officials of the government-backed lending giant who warned it could expose the company to claims that it was colluding with a rival to fix mortgage rates.Emails reviewed by The Associated Press show that Fannie Mae executives were unnerved about what one called the “very problematic” disclosure of data by Lauren Smith, the company’s head of marketing, who was acting on Pulte’s behalf. “Lauren, the information that was provided to Freddie Mac in this email is a problem,” Malloy Evans, senior vice president of Fannie Mae’s single-family mortgage division, wrote in an Oct. 11 email. “That is confidential, competitive information.”He also copied Fannie Mae’s CEO, Priscilla Almodovar, on the email, which bore the subject line: “As Per Director Pulte’s Ask.” Evans asked Fannie Mae’s top attorney “to weigh in on what, if any, steps we need to take legally to protect ourselves now.” While Smith still holds her position, the senior Fannie Mae officials who called her conduct into question were all forced out of their jobs late last month, along with internal ethics watchdogs who were investigating Pulte and his allies. Housing industry rattled by dismissalsThe dismissals rattled the housing industry and drew condemnation from Democrats. It also gave Pulte’s critics evidence to support claims that he has leveraged the nonpublic information available to him to further his own political aims. “This is another example of Bill Pulte weaponizing his role to do Donald Trump’s bidding, instead of working to lower costs amidst a housing crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. “His behavior raises significant questions, and he needs to be brought in front of Congress to answer them.” The episode marks the latest example o...