By Marisa Taylor and Chris Prentice
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The political appointee leveling fraud accusations against perceived opponents of President Donald Trump enlisted a man who’d once been convicted of a felony sex offense as a consultant to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to six people familiar with the role.
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, appointed Mark Zarkin, a Michigan restaurateur and prominent Detroit-area Trump supporter, as a consultant to the two mortgage companies after taking office in March, these people said. Reuters couldn’t determine exactly when Zarkin was recruited, under what terms, or the specific tasks assigned to him in the role.
In recent weeks, according to internal documentation reviewed by Reuters, Zarkin still had a Freddie Mac email and was described internally as a “consultant.” The role, the six people familiar with the matter told Reuters, has alarmed some employees at the FHFA as well as at Fannie and Freddie, the two government-sponsored mortgage enterprises overseen by the federal agency.
Zarkin once pleaded no contest to a felony sex crime involving a sexual encounter with a “mentally incapacitated” woman, according to Michigan court records reviewed by Reuters, and has no significant experience in the housing sector. His felony conviction was later vacated, for reasons that weren’t explained by the judge. Separately, an ongoing Michigan lawsuit also accuses Zarkin of involvement in a plan to bribe Trump in exchange for the pardon of an unidentified person in New York.
By telephone and in person at his restaurant in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Zarkin declined on Thursday to be interviewed by Reuters. In a text message Thursday evening, he wrote: “I have never been employed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.”
“I also have no criminal record,” he added. “Anything you say to the contrary is defamatory.”
Pulte, in a separate text message, on Friday said the news agency’s questions to him were “filled with completely false and defamatory statements.” He didn’t elaborate. Neither Pulte nor Zarkin answered detailed questions about any working relationship between them, Zarkin’s role at the mortgage companies, or Zarkin’s publicly documented legal battles in Michigan.
Reuters couldn’t determine whether the FHFA chief was aware of the case involving the Michigan woman or the ongoing lawsuit alleging a bribery plan. Three of the people familiar with Zarkin’s consulting role said he was frequently a member of an entourage around Pulte when the new director began appearing at Fannie offices in and around Washington earlier this year.
Officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn’t respond to requests for comment. In an unsigned email in response to Reuters’ questions, the FHFA media office on Thursday wrote: “Nearly all of your statements are false, misleading, or defamatory.” It didn’t offer specifics.
The FHFA is a formerly low-profile agency that oversees elements of the mortgage industry. Under Pulte, it has emerged as a political cudgel for the president. The FHFA has accused a Federal Reserve governor and prominent Democrats of mortgage fraud, leading to the controversial indictment last month of New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both James and Lisa Cook, the Fed governor, have denied wrongdoing.
Pulte has also described Fannie and Freddie, major government-backed companies responsible for much of the liquidity in the U.S. mortgage market, as hotbeds of corruption under former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “Obama and Biden kept Fannie and Freddie under the thumb of Washington grifters,” he wrote in September on X, the social media site. “We’ve put them back to work for the American citizens.”
As chairman of the boards of both companies, Pulte has overseen the dismissal of senior leadership and other longtime employees. Although high-level personnel changes are common at government-affiliated enterprises in a new administration, the extent of the overhaul has angered some staffers. On Monday, Reuters reported that the White House fired the acting inspector general at the FHFA, removing an official meant to act as an independent watchdog at the agency.
Four people familiar with the Fannie and Freddie dismissals told Reuters that Pulte internally has cast some firings as a purge of opponents of the White House agenda. His appointment of Zarkin as a consultant, a role that wasn’t announced inside the FHFA, has troubled some staffers, according to the six people familiar with the matter.
Reuters couldn’t determine when Zarkin and Pulte became acquainted or why the FHFA boss decided to recruit him. Pulte’s family, like Zarkin, hails from the Detroit area. Pulte’s grandfather established a homebuilding company there, now publicly traded, that remains one of the largest in the United States.
NO-CONTEST PLEA IN CASE OF AN ‘INCAPACITATED’ WOMAN
Court records reviewed by Reuters show that Zarkin pleaded no contest to an attempted third-degree sexual conduct charge in Macomb County, Michigan, in 1999. The plea followed a case in which investigators found Zarkin’s DNA during a “pelvic examination” of a woman, not yet of drinking age, who had been “mentally incapacitated” by alcohol and Valium, according to the records. In 2000, Zarkin was sentenced to eight months in jail and three years’ probation, and ordered to register as a sex offender.
After he served his sentence and spent nine years on the sex-offender registry, Zarkin’s lawyer successfully petitioned the state court to vacate the conviction, arguing that his continued listing on the sex registry was excessive, according to the records. The attorney argued that Zarkin, when he agreed to his plea deal, hadn’t realized he would remain on the registry for so long. Court records from the plea deal show that registering as an offender was an explicit part of Zarkin’s plea agreement.
The 2009 court order vacating the conviction gave no reason for the decision. Legal experts expressed surprise at the ruling afterward and said it was unusual, nearly a decade after such a conviction, for a court to vacate it.
“Judges don’t usually vacate a sentence like this,” Jonathan Jones, a criminal defense attorney who has practiced in the area for more than 30 years, told Reuters. “If someone is informed that they’ll have to register as a sex offender, they generally can’t come back years later and say ‘I didn’t realize it.’”
A 2019 investigation by the Detroit Free Press found that the prosecutor assigned to the hearing – not a member of the original prosecution team – didn’t object to Zarkin’s motion to vacate. Mark Switalski, the judge who approved the motion, told Reuters by telephone that he didn’t remember the specifics of the case.
Zarkin in recent years became an active Trump supporter in Michigan, a pivotal state for the Republican’s comeback victory in 2024. A restaurateur known for ties to prominent businesspeople and local officials, Zarkin has appeared in public with well-known Trump-circle figures.
Trump himself thanked Zarkin during a 2023 speech in the Detroit area, where people familiar with his efforts said Zarkin raised money and helped arrange at least one campaign appearance by Trump the following year. These people told Reuters Zarkin later boasted Trump would give him a job in the administration.
The White House didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Zarkin is involved in another Michigan controversy.
In an ongoing lawsuit, filed earlier this year in a Wayne County court, a former city manager and a former police officer allege that Zarkin held conversations with Jamiel Altaheri, until recently the police chief in Hamtramck, a Detroit suburb. In those conversations, the plaintiffs allege, the two men discussed a plan to pay Trump as much as $5 million to secure a pardon for an unidentified New York acquaintance of Altaheri accused of unspecified financial crimes. According to their lawsuit, filed against the city and municipal officials including Altaheri, the plaintiffs allege they lost their jobs in part for disclosing the plan.
Altaheri agreed to step down as police chief in October, following an investigation by the city. His attorney, Amir Makled, told Reuters that Altaheri denies the allegations and has filed a motion with the court to dispute them. The lawsuit doesn’t identify the person in New York for whom a pardon was allegedly sought or indicate whether the person has been tried or convicted.
Hamtramck city officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The plaintiffs also informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Michigan State Police of their allegations, according to the lawsuit and a summary of the investigation conducted for the city by a local law firm. The summary, reviewed by Reuters, said the FBI had seized mobile telephones related to the case.
The FBI didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Michigan police said the agency has no ongoing investigations related to an attempt to bribe the president.
One of the city officials named in the lawsuit was charged by Monroe County prosecutors in August with felony election-fraud charges that mirror some of the allegations raised by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Another faces a misdemeanor charge, also related to election irregularities, in state court.
Zarkin is not named in either of those cases.
In March, according to four people familiar with the matter, Pulte hired Aaron Kofsky, a former advisor to Senator JD Vance before Vance became vice president, and later put him in charge of the FHFA’s Division of Housing Mission and Goals. Last year, Vance fired Kofsky for posting online about using drugs including cocaine and opiates, according to a story in Wired magazine, which first reported his posts.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm that Vance fired him.
Neither Kofsky nor the vice president’s office responded to requests for comment.
(Additional reporting by Mike Colias in Detroit and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington. Editing by Paulo Prada.)
