The recent dust-up between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Donald Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte isn't an accident, according to observers — it's a power struggle orchestrated by one of Bessent's main rivals within the Trump administration.
Bessent caused a stir last week after getting into a near-altercation with Pulte that culminated in Bessent threatening to punch him.
"Former Trump aide Steve Bannon told Semafor on Sunday that Pulte is 'simply the twisted instrument of Howard Lutnick in his ongoing war against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,'" reported Shelby Talcott and Eleanor Mueller for Semafor on Monday.
Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, originally angled for the Treasury Secretary position himself, only to be denied.
Pulte, in recent months, has used his position to snoop through the records of various politicians and government officials with whom Trump has an adversarial relationship, and lodge complaints against them for mortgage fraud when he finds discrepancies in their paperwork.
The latest target of his attacks is Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, whom he claims took out two different mortgages as primary residences. However, a recent Reuters report indicates that Cook told her credit union that one of the properties was a vacation home during the preliminary estimate process, casting serious doubts that the paperwork error on her loan documents was a result of intentional fraud.