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The Trump administration has accused several political rivals of mortgage fraud, but an explosive new investigation has found President Donald Trump may have committed the same crime himself.

The bombshell report from ProPublica reporters Justin Elliot, Robert Faturechi, and Alex Mierjeski points to a 1993 mortgage Trump signed on a Palm Beach home that he claimed would be his primary residence.

But less than two months later, Trump was given another mortgage on a nearby property he also claimed would be his primary residence, the ProPublica report found.

What’s more — it appears Trump, who was living in New York at the time, never moved into either home.

If those actions sound familiar, it’s because Trump and some administration officials have accused four political foes of similar crimes: Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), and former Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA).

All four have denied wrongdoing.

Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter when asked if the Florida mortgages were obtained similarly to the ones in which he’s claimed wrongdoing.

A White House spokesperson told the outlet there “was no defraudation” in the Trump mortgages, saying: “This is yet another desperate attempt by the left-wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations.”

The spokesperson added: “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.”

See below for a summary of the mortgage fraud cases against the Trump foes:

Lisa Cook

Trump’s then-Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte accused Cook of mortgage fraud in a series of social media posts back in August 2025. He referred his findings to the Department of Justice, which has not yet brought a case against her.

Nevertheless, Trump used the allegations in an attempt to fire Cook from the Fed. A back-and-forth legal battle made it as far as the Supreme Court, which denied Trump’s request to dismiss her.

Cook can now remain in her position until a decision is reached in the ongoing case.

Despite the court defeat, Pulte declared on CNBC in May Cook will be indicted “no matter what the Supreme Court does.”

Adam Schiff

In July 2025, Trump attacked Schiff, who led the first impeachment case against Trump, as a “THIEF” while sharing an apparent tax document to make his case.

In a Truth Social post, he accused “scam artist” Schiff of committing mortgage fraud, adding that Fannie Mae’s Financial Crimes Division was after him.

No charges have been brought against Schiff.

Letitia James

James was charged with mortgage fraud in October by the president’s former attorney and his handpicked appointee for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan. The case was later dropped when it was found that Halligan was unlawfully appointed.

Attempts to reindict James have since failed.

Eric Swalwell

In November, Pulte referred Swalwell to the Justice Department for a federal criminal probe related to a Washington, D.C., home, NBC News reported at the time.

Swalwell later filed a lawsuit against Pulte, accusing him of weaponizing the probe. The suit was dropped when the Department of Justice declined to pursue the case against Swalwell.

The post Trump May Have Committed Same Mortgage Fraud He’s Lobbed Against Political Rivals: Bombshell Report first appeared on Mediaite.

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If your time on macOS is solely spent switching between the well-known apps that everyone uses—your web browser, Notes, Apple Music—then you're missing out. There are a host of more unusual and idiosyncratic apps for Apple's desktop operating system that are well worth digging into.

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The apps collected in the list below fall under that description, and while they might not have been installed on millions of Macs or be particularly complex in what they offer, they're all quite useful. Give them a try and see how they can upgrade your macOS experience.

ScrollPods

Scroll around macOS by tilting your head. Credit: Lifehacker

Scrolling isn't particularly hard on macOS, but what if it were even easier? ScrollPods teams up with a connected pair of AirPods to let you scroll up and down webpages, documents, and more with a tilt of the head. It works with anything on screen that can be scrolled.

The utility is simple to set up, and based on my testing, it works quite well. The default sensitivity is just right, with slight head tilts enough to nudge a page up or down, but you can adjust the sensitivity and set up custom gestures for the app through its settings.

• ScrollPods (free)

Slidr

You can opt to activate Slidr with a keyboard shortcut. Credit: Lifehacker

You can add some extra functionality to your MacBook trackpad with Slidr: It turns the left side of your trackpad into a brightness slider, and the right side into a volume slider, so you can quickly adjust these key settings without interrupting your typing and scrolling flow.

You're able to take advantage of a free trial before committing to the purchase, so you can see if it works for you. It couldn't be any more straightforward to use: The app runs from the menu bar, and there are options for adjusting the sensitivity and position of the slide gestures, and swapping over the brightness and volume sliders if you prefer.

• Slidr (free trial, then $4.99)

Pipiri

Pipiri comes with lots of settings to customize. Credit: Lifehacker

A picture-in-picture mode can be very useful when multi-tasking, but it's not supported in every app—something Pipiri fixes. Once you've got Pipiri installed, any window on the macOS desktop can be put into a picture-in-picture mode, running on top of your other apps.

So, for example, you can keep an AI agent window or a social media feed visible on screen while you get on with something else. There are lots of options to play around with, too, including the refresh rate of the overlaid window, app hotkeys, and adaptive resizing.

• Pipiri (free trial, then $9.70)

Haptyk

Get an authentic mechanical keyboard sound with Haptyk. Credit: Lifehacker

Haptyk takes advantage of the hidden accelerometer that's built into every Apple Silicon MacBook keyboard, figuring out how hard you're striking each key and adding appropriate audio. You get mechanical keyboard sound effects, with your existing MacBook keyboard.

I gave the app a go and it works really well: There's zero lag on the sound effects, and you get the same experience across every app. You've got 16 different keyboard sound packs to choose from, plus lots of configuration options (including volume, pitch, and gain).

• Haptyk (free trial, then $8)

Stealthy

Stealthy can jump into action automatically during video calls. Credit: Lifehacker

If you're a regular video caller, then you'll know that subtle feeling of dread that rises up whenever you're called upon to share your screen or to record something you're doing. What browser tabs do you have open? Is an embarrassing notification going to pop up?

Stealthy deals with this with the minimum of fuss, hiding your desktop icons, the desktop wallpaper, and the dock. silencing notifications, and clearing away open app windows you don't want visible on screen. It can also launch automatically when video calls start.

• Stealthy (free trial, then $12.99)

Gestimer

You're able to customize Gestimer in a number of different ways. Credit: Lifehacker

There's nothing too revolutionary about Gestimer, but it does a simple job in an intuitive way, and is likely to come in handy more often than you might think. It lets you set timers and reminders by just dragging down the app icon from the macOS menu bar.

There's no messing around with opening up other apps or digging through calendars—it's just click and drag, with the length of the drag controlling the time that's set. There's a persistent countdown in the menu bar, and you get a notification at the appropriate time.

• Gestimer (free trial, then $6.99)

Unclack

Save others from your typing sounds with Unclack. Credit: Lifehacker

Unclack is both simple and useful: It mutes your microphone when you're typing (even more helpful if you've installed Haptyk, above). That means you no longer need to worry about your aggressive typing style distracting other people during video meetings.

It runs quietly from the menu bar and you don't need to do anything to enable or disable it—it just works, and you won't even know it's there. Should you need to talk and type at the same time, you can disable Unclack with a couple of clicks until you need it again.

• Unclack (free)

When looking over the myriad issues with our journalism complex, one inherent flaw is that our journalism schools serve as the source of heavily biased new-generation media figures. Those leftist hothouses such as Columbia University and NYU are regarded as the glowing wellsprings of upcoming journalists, and the problem now seems only to become exacerbated.

One of the bigger media stories this year has been the internal strife at CBS News, and in particular the upheaval caused at the esteemed news program 60 Minutes. That show delivered the melodrama by the gross in the first half of the year, as changes and turmoil were constantly made public, and ultimately it led to staff departures, both voluntary and compelled. The two prominent names involved were Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi, veteran investigative reporters who were let go following independent bouts of strife.

Months have passed since the tremorous departures, and as the ripples from that have dissipated, both figures have not been heard from much lately. But a new announcement has brought them back to public notice.

The Columbia Journalism School has sent out notice that both Pelley and Alfonsi will be serving in a leadership capacity in the new school year. They have been named as Journalists In Residence for the upcoming 2026-27 semesters on campus. These positions sound more than token appearances.

During their residency, Alfonsi and Pelley will work closely with students, individually and as a group, through lectures, workshops and special events designed to sharpen their reporting, investigative and sourcing skills. Their appointments give CJS students access to two journalists whose reporting has shaped the national conversation for decades.

Great; hands-on training from a pair with plenty of mud on their mitts. This does not deliver encouraging prospects of repairing what is wrong in our news complex. Rating for news outlets continue to shrivel, and media layoffs are such a regular occurrence people barely notice any longer. Multiple polls show public trust in the media is at historic lows. But addressing this by retraining those looking to enter the news landscape is not a consideration.

The Dean at Columbia Journalism School is Jelani Cobb, who hails from his days at The New Yorker, and has since elevated into the elite strata of academia. He once told Politico his intention at CJS was “to be a pipeline that helps make the [journalism] field itself more democratic.” Yet here he is bringing a pair of elitists from the industry to only entrench the practices that have delivered the contemporary problems.

Both Pelley and Alfonsi displayed this year traits that not only justified their dismissals but also defy the ethos that the elites in the industry usually espouse. Pelley spent much of the year before his release complaining loudly about his network and the management for the temerity to introduce accountability and responsibility in their reporting. His “How DARE you” peacocking displayed a journalist who felt he was above editorial oversight and that the “60 Minutes” program was to operate as an untouchable entity.

It is not as if Scott is a journalist free of past indiscretions. He misrepresented positions held by the Moms For Liberty founders in an interview, blamed Steve Scalise for being a shooting victim, and he was roundly mocked over his softball interview with the enfeebled President Biden, among other examples. He also has a past conflict with management leading to his firing from the CBS Evening News. 

By the time of his departure, it was clear that Scott Pelley felt his stature was preeminent over the reporting and the facts. He stood up in the face of his new superiors, and then expressed surprise when, after declaring the staff would not listen to their directives, he was told to pack up his desk. His affrontery was significant enough that a network president was the one who came in and handed the newsman his termination slip.

Alfonsi, a lesser-regarded name but another vet on the show, makes for an even more confounding choice to guide the fertile minds of over-eager up-and-coming reporters. Hers is a resume littered with examples of how not to perform the job. She was the source of the pandemic-era hit job on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that was roundly criticized. She deceptively edited a speech video to alter the governor’s messaging and avoided key facts and interviews with figures delivering contradictions to her narrative. The report was so bad it was all but debunked before the initial broadcast.

Last year, Alfonsi covered the efforts in Germany to clamp down on free expression, nodding along as officials explained why it would be necessary to jail those who expressed themselves in disapproved fashion. And then there was the soap opera concerning her December report on El Salvador’s CECOT prison and the U.S. immigration policy with that facility.

When still-fresh news director Bari Weiss had Alfonsi’s report held back from broadcast to be reworked, Sharyn went public with claims she was being censored. Weiss had asked for official word from administration officials to be included for contrast; that is, she was not silencing Alfonsi, she was asking for more to be added, not cutting out content. Then more egregious details emerged.

Sharyn had declared on the record that she had reached out to officials in the administration and never heard back. But later it was shown that no fewer than three different sources of the administration had issued statements to Alfonsi, and did so before the broadcast. That is blatant deception by the journalist, all while she was critical of her superiors for demanding she include those very components.

These are the power brokers in the press who will be guiding the next batch of aspiring journalists and media workers. They displayed corrupted examples of journalism and provoked justified firings this year, and now they are tabbed to lead the next batch of blank-slate minds in J-school.

Meaning – things are not expected to improve anytime soon in the news industry.

The post Fired ’60 Minutes’ Correspondents Now Primed to Teach Next Gen Journos Exactly the Wrong Lessons first appeared on Mediaite.

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Sugar, having just completed its second season, doesn't try to obscure or downplay its reliance on old-school Hollywood noir tropes: Its characters are driven to emulate the style of antiheroes of old, and clips from old movies even play alongside the action as a means of driving the point home. The central mystery, at the outset of the series, sees detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) summoned to the mansion of a rich movie producer (James Cromwell), whose granddaughter has gone missing. It all plays in a very new-noir sandbox until an absolutely wild, love-it-or-hate it plot twist that drives the rest of the series.

I'm not looking to give anything away here, but Sugar's pivot makes it tough to talk about—some of these shows might represent mild spoilers, but only in the sense that they reveal that there's a bit more going on in the show than in a more traditional detective drama.

Lady in the Lake (2024)

Moving from modern-day Los Angeles to 1960s Baltimore doesn't take us as far afield as you might expect given that, after all, noir is timeless. Natalie Portman plays Jewish housewife Maddie Schwartz, who, bored with her life, locates the body of a missing child and uses the experience to get a job at the Baltimore Star. Meanwhile, Black mother Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) is working to protect her family and community, running up against gunrunners and racketeers in the process—the two women's lives, before long, colliding. Stream Lady in the Lake on Apple TV.

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Perry Mason (2020 – 2022)

This addictive odd duck of a show places the Perry Mason of print, film, and television into a dark and gritty Depression-era prequel. (I'm not excessively familiar with the Erle Stanley Gardner source novels, but I gather they don't go nearly as hard into noir as this show.) Matthew Rhys is perfectly cast as the brilliant but hard-living defense lawyer, going through a divorce while still facing trauma from the his experiences during Great War. In the show's opening, he's hired to investigate the case of a kidnapped and mutilated child, one which ends up having ties to crooked cops, local business leaders, and politicians in 1932 LA. Juliet Rylance co-stars as no-nonsense legal secretary Della Street, with Tatiana Maslany as a creepy evangelist. Stream Perry Mason on HBO Max.

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Monsieur Spade (2024)

An original drama from Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Homicide, Oz), Monsieur Spade finds Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, of The Maltese Falcon fame, living a quiet life in retirement in the South of France. It's all going very well for the rumpled former detective—until six nuns are brutally murdered at a nearby convent, the same convent that's been home to Sam's ward for some time. Naturally, he finds his past has caught up with him, and is forced to surrender his idyllic life in order to help uncover the complex mystery that endangers his (very few) loved ones. Clive Owen is great as the rumpled, emphysemic detective, and the story feels like a fitting sequel to Hammett's defining noir detective novel. Stream Monsieur Spade on Prime Video and AMC+.

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Bosch (2014 – 2021)

Many of these shows offer up twists on the noir formula, but Bosch is a more traditional crime drama, one that wears its new-noir aspirations on its sleeve—and no less effective for any of that. Titus Welliver is in the title role as LAPD detective Harry Bosch (star of the Michael Connelly novels), kicking off the series on trial for shooting a suspect in self-defense while investigating the murder of a 12-year-old. The second season even sees him investigating the murder of a film producer à la Sugar's first-season case. Stream Bosch on Prime Video.

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Cowboy Bebop (1998 – 1999)

This may seem like an odd fit here, but this iconic genre classic wears its noir influences on its sleeve, and given Sugar's now-infamous plot twist, a little sci-fi is perhaps not out of the question. Cowboy Bebop is one of the undisputed GOATs in the anime sphere, blending western, comedy, and crime genres and setting the resultant mashup to a killer soundtrack. The title's "cowboys" are bounty hunters in a near-future in which humans have been forced to colonize the solar system after Earth became uninhabitable. Former hitman Spike Spiegel leads his crew on one nearly disastrous mission after another, their standalone adventures all building to a thoroughly memorable climax. Stream Cowboy Bebop on Crunchyroll or buy it from Prime Video.

Cowboy Bebop (1998 – 1999)

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Spider-Noir (2026)

Given that the franchise includes live-action takes on Morbius and Madame Web, I'm not sure this qualifies as the most unexpected Spider spin-off—but it's weird, no question. Nicolas Cage reprises, in live-action, the role he voiced in the Spider-Verse movies: that of Ben Reilly, a rumpled private investigator in the 1940s coming to terms with his past as superhero the Spider while being nudged into putting the suit back on. Cage is as deliciously unhinged as you'd expect, and he's clearly having fun with the classic noir-movie tropes, but there's also enough violence, mystery, and style here that it plays more as homage than parody. Stream Spider-Noir on Prime Video.

Spider-Noir (2026)

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Lucifer (2016 – 2021)

The title doesn't refer to a nickname or a euphemism: we're dealing with the literal Lucifer. Tom Ellis plays the fallen angel who, having grown bored with ruling over hell, decides to open a Los Angeles nightclub because hey, why not? When that's not quite enough entertainment, he teams up with homicide detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to use his special skills and knowledge to help out, especially on cases involving the supernatural. As wacky as that sounds, the show deals somewhat poignantly with Lucifer's trauma, while also exploring our world as an outsider, not at all unlike John Sugar. Stream Lucifer on Netflix.

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Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991, 2017)

You want neo-noir that subverts the tropes? I'm not sure that any show does it better than this groundbreaking bit of weirdness from David Lynch and Mark Frost, in which teens and adults in the deceptively quiet Twin Peaks face tragedy accompanied by supernatural threats from outside of our normal space and time. (I think?) Kyle MacLachlan plays FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who arrives in the title town to investigate the murder of teenager homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), precipitating a (very) long night of the soul as Cooper uncovers secrets and mysteries among the town's delightfully, and often disturbingly, weird residents. Stream Twin Peaks on Paramount+.

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The Expanse (2015 – 2022)

Set in a somewhat near-ish future, The Expanse (based on the book series by James S.A. Corey) imagines a colonized solar system into which we’ve carried all of our old familiar problems, and then some: Earth sits at the historical and cultural center of things, while Mars colonists, by virtue of having to survive in a challenging environment, have developed technological and military superiority, and folks living in "the Belt" have had to scrabble to survive. Greed, fear, and shortsightedness make conflict nearly inevitable, even if the series isn’t quite as cynical as it at first appears. Despite its space-opera trappings, The Expanse wears its noir influences very much on its sleeves; never moreso than when Thomas Jane's rumpled, hard-living (and hard-dying), detective Joe Miller is about. Stream The Expanse on Prime Video.

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Signal (2016 – )

Blending police procedural, mystery, and science fiction, this K-drama remains one of the most-watched dramas in South Korean TV history—enough that a second season is coming after a wait of nearly 10 years. Police profiler Park Hae-young (Lee Je-hoon) finds a discarded walkie-talkie that connects him with Detective Lee Jae-han (Cho Jin-woong), who disappeared in 2000 but who is able to communicate from an earlier time. The two detectives are able to work together, across time, to solve a very cold case—but soon discover that there are disturbing consequences in the present when they fiddle with time. Stream Signal on Netflix.

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News that conservative podcaster Katie Miller had a “fling” with disgraced Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) when she was a 22-year-old Capitol Hill intern has left political observers reeling.

Miller is a former Trump administration official and wife of current White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Independent Capitol Hill blog Sources Say News — run by journalist Juliegrace Brufke — broke the story which has sparked a ton of reaction, particularly among left-leaning critics.

Liberal influencer and political commentator Jo Carducci wrote, “Katie Miller said she was ‘positive’ there were other interns involved with Eric Swalwell. Well, well, fucking well. Turns out SHE was one of them.”

Liberal commentator Jamie Bonkiewicz added, “Katie Miller’s type appears to be the worst men in American politics. Which makes perfect sense because garbage attracts garbage.”

Other high-profile liberal influencers sounded off as well.

“The fact that Katie Miller refuses to call out anybody in Trump’s orbit that are all cankles deep in this Epstein ring is just really stunning to me,” said left wing podcaster Jennifer Welch. “And at the same time [she] talks about family values.”

Swalwell ended up resigning from Congress and dropping out of California’s race for governor in April due to sexual assault allegations against him.

He wrote on social media, “I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make.”

Katie Miller’s name came into play as Swalwell worked to prevent the release of a Justice Department investigation into his relationship with suspected Chinese intelligence operative Christine Fang between 2011 and 2015.

“According to information provided to Sources Say News, Swalwell’s side raised the prospect that releasing the files could be viewed as a punitive attempt to weaponize the Department, pointing to the congressman’s long-concluded sexual relationship with former senior administration official Katie Miller from roughly a decade ago,” Brufke wrote.

Miller responded to Brufke’s story on X, writing, “I was an intern working on Capitol Hill.”

Swalwell did not respond to requests for comment, per Sources Say News.

The post Katie Miller’s Reported Tryst With Eric Swalwell Sparks Social Media Eruption Among Observers on the Left first appeared on Mediaite.