So I was watching the above video with Steve Mnuchin and Maria Bartiromo because of its title: “Mnuchin on Fannie And Freddie Funds Used to Pay for ObamaCare: It’s True”.  Bartiromo mentions in passing that a bill was being considered to make Fannie and Freddie comply with the Freedom of Information Act, which I had not heard about.  Sure enough, she was right, and it turns out that the bill—H.R. 1694, Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017 (click to read the text of the bill)—has passed the House and been sent to the Senate!

This is great news for those of us who, like me, were fighting against foreclosure and other mortgage shenanigans and tried to get FOIA info out of Fannie and/or Freddie but were told that Fannie and Freddie were private companies, even though they had been taken into conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and been given billions in bailout money ($187 billion—largest bailout in history), making them effectively part of the government.  Indeed, in the Fox News video above, Bartiromo even mentions that Mnuchin thinks that Fannie and Freddie “need to be privatized” (approx. 4:00 in the video).  To hear Fannie and Freddie tell it, they have always been private.  That’s what they told me back in 2010:

“Fannie Mae is a private company whose documents are not subject to the FOIA…The purpose of the FOIA is to open the actions of government agencies to public scrutiny, not to reveal the inner workings of private entities. The FHFA’s temporary role as conservator of Fannie Mae does not transform the business records of this private company into ‘agency records’ subject to the FOIA.”

And here’s the copy of the letter they sent me:

The plot thickens, does it not?  The Republicans want to attack Obama and Obamacare and now suddenly want to use the diversion of Fannie and Freddie funds as a cudgel to beat Obamacare to death.  And this Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act will help them wield that cudgel.  What they may not realize is that they’ll be opening a Pandora’s Box of Fannie fraud when those of us who know that FANNIE MAE, BY ITS OWN ADMISSION, OWNS NOTHING (same goes for Freddie) will use this law (fingers crossed) to get the info we sought back in the thick of the foreclosure crisis!  And then nail Fannie and Freddie to the wall–because as the logo parody at the top of the page suggests, Fannie “Mae” not own your mortgage and never did!