This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

There's been an amusing turn in the saga involving President Trump's efforts to unleash the Justice Department against his enemies.

Trump has been relying on his flunkies to manufacture allegations of mortgage fraud

against his foes, particularly against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, which then form the basis

for referrals to DOJ. The whole thing's a big scam. Now news organizations have blown big holes in

that effort.

And meanwhile, a new poll shows that large majorities are against Trump interfering with the Fed,

suggesting they don't buy for a second any of the tricks he's using to try to target Lisa Cook.

All this is another example of Trump using authoritarian tactics that threaten to become terrible abuses of power,

yet also show what an utter clown show some of this has truly become.

We're talking about all this with Matt Ford, who writes about legal affairs as staff writer for the New Republic.

Matt, good to have you on.

Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

So Trump is trying to hijack the Federal Reserve and his underling William Pulte, whose head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency,

went and quote, unquote, found proof that Fed Governor Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud.

That's based on declaring numerous residents as primary.

She denies it, and the courts will get to the bottom of that.

But here's the bottom line.

Trump's allies and the government are rummaging through the mortgages of his enemies to target them.

Matt, by itself, that's an extremely corrupt act.

Can you talk about that?

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