Once upon a time (for a defunct syndicate), your correspondent posed a query in a screed opining on a collection of contemporaneous scandals:

(W)hat’s worse?

a) Cheating on the field (A-Rod [then-New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez], Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and 100-plus others)

b) Cheating on your wife (A-Rod, Clemens)

c) Cheating on your taxes ([then Senate Democratic Majority Leader] Tom Daschle and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) or

d) Cheating your public through bald-faced lies, some reaching to the level of perjury (all the aforementioned).”

This scribe’s judgment: “none of the above. Cheating is cheating is cheating is cheating.”

Moreover, cheating in one area is a leading indicator that the perpetrator is shading truth and/or shattering trust in another.

Winking at such cheating was referred to as the “Happens in Vegas” syndrome. And the assertion made that what happens in Vegas, in the clubhouse, on tax returns, and inside and outside of marriages doesn’t actually stay in any of those places.

It seeps into our culture and “spawns Enrons and Tycos and earmarks and pols on the take. It leads to trillion-dollar bailouts and stimulus packages, to waves of foreclosures, to lenders too afraid to lend and investors too skittish to invest.”

Which brings this pundit to the indictment of one Letitia (Tish) James, New York Attorney General and Donald Trump tormentor, for fraudulently misrepresenting an intended investment property as a secondary residence in a mortgage application. And to the various responses thereto.

Response Round 1 – the Trump Department of Justice is “weaponizing the judicial system” to seek “retribution” against the brave Resistance leader. 

Two words: ha ha. Hadn’t Ms. James twisted beyond recognition, with the help of an equally twisted trial judge, a consumer fraud law to go after The Donald — having run for office on explicit pledges to find grounds to sue and even indict the then-president?

To the extent that even a radical liberal appeals court judge thundered that the mangled statute had “never been used … to attack successful, private, commercial transactions, negotiated at arm’s length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests”?

And that the goal of the suit “was not ‘market hygiene’ . . . but political hygiene, ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business”?

In other words, Tish also “cheated” in court.

Which led the radical left posse riding behind “Big Tish” to Response Round 2:  in the words of CNN’s Kasie Hunt, mortgage fraud “is something that everyone in America, or many people at least, if you’re lucky enough to be able to buy a house in America, you deal with this, right?” In other words, the “everybody does it” defense.

The instant blowback: no, not everyone does it (although too many do, and your pundit is coming back to this). 

So, Tish’s apologists resorted to Response Round 3: the $18,933 in “ill-gotten gains” over the life of the loan charged in the indictment is “petty” and even, per a former federal prosecutor, “bupkis.”

Well now. Your commentator suggests bundling the last two arguments. (Putting aside the further, tear-jerking apologia, leaked to the New York Times, that two grand-nieces actually resided in the home and that Auntie visited often – a narrative that merely shifts the wrongdoing to falsifying tax and disclosure filings). 

And then doing a little math. 

If “everybody” commits mortgage fraud – and there are 86.47 million residential mortgages outstanding – $19,000 per mortgage extrapolates to $1.64 trillion. And even if fraud only reaches, say, 10% of mortgages outstanding, to update (apocryphally) the late Senator Everett Dirksen: $164 billion here and $164 billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Enough to drive up costs substantially for lenders and honest borrowers – and maybe even sink an industry.

Because here’s the danger: one recalls that at the heart of the financial crisis of 2008 were mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, many of which bundled so-called “liar loans” in which the income and assets of borrowers were brazenly misrepresented. 

Low-quality “subprime” mortgages, of which these liar loans were a subcategory, were actually estimated to account for a mere 16% of mortgage debt in 2008. Yet that was enough to tank not just the mortgage and housing industries, but also the stock market and the entire economy.

Stipulated: everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But what if the sworn chief judicial officer of the Empire State is seen by the public to get away with apparent lying to mortgage lenders and federal agencies? Not to mention one of the nation’s leading banking regulators and a senator from its largest state, a censured prevaricator and cheat who sits on the Judiciary Committee?

Might not hundreds of thousands and even millions of the everyday borrowers taking out some six million mortgages a year – seeing that “leaders” in positions of high legal and financial responsibility can falsify applications without consequence – conclude that “everyone” can indeed pursue the 2020s version of “liar loans,” misrepresenting various facts to their advantage?

And even if only 10-15% of applicants are encouraged to traverse such a course, might it not overwhelm the “random” checks government-sponsored enterprises apparently undertake of applications? And might that not be sufficient to usher in a new mortgage crisis?

In other words, what happened with Tish – and Lisa and Adam – might not stay with the trio but infect the entire mortgage market, and once again domino into other markets beyond.

That possibility simply can’t be entertained. Such destructive rationalizations must be roundly refuted and rejected, in GOP talking points and ultimately in court.

And the public must be reassured in Ms. James’ case – and possibly those of Ms. Cook and Senator Schiff – that cheaters, especially serial ones, always lose.

Bob Maistros, a regular contributor to Issues & Insights, is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.