Adam Schiff paying just 3% mortgage on homes at center of mortgage fraud probe
The Department of Justice is accusing the junior senator from California of claiming two homes as primary residences for more than a decade – to score lower mortgage rates and property taxes. A grand jury in Maryland is currently weighing a criminal indictment against the former 12-term congressman.
5 Schiff, a 12-term congressman, is in his first term as a Senator of the Golden State.
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The newly released annual financial documents show that even after Schiff finally designated his Potomac, Maryland property as a second home in 2020 – after 16 years – he got the exact rock-bottom mortgage rate as his California residence when he refinanced both that year.
The average 30-year mortgage interest rate in 2020 was 3.10% for primary residences in the US, with secondary residences usually subject to rates up to 0.5% higher.
Those terms padded his wealth, since the California Democrat would have saved somewhere between $30,000 to $50,000 over 16 years, an analysis by The Post found.
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That spacious 3,420-square-foot home, in one of DC's most affluent suburbs, where neighbors say Schiff actually spends most of his time, is now worth $1.4 million – almost double what he paid for it in 2003.
Schiff also benefited from a homeowner's tax exemption by declaring his much smaller 650-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in Burbank, California a primary home, resulting in a $7,000 reduction in property taxes.
5 Schiff listed the Potomac, Maryland, home as a primary residence for 16 years.
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The Senator's bank assets soared to between $1.18 million and $2.63 million in 2024, the records also show.
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That's up from between $1.02 million and $2.37 million in 2023, and from $578,000 – $1.35 million in 2022, the year before he bought the Maryland home.
5 Schiff also owns a condo in this building in Burbank, California, near Los Angeles.
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Schiff, 65, who led the first House impeachment inquiry into President Trump and has repeatedly said 'no one's above the law,' has also failed to disclose his mortgages on annual financial disclosures until 2011, a Post review found, even though he bought the Potomac property in 2003 and the California condo in 2009, an omission he has not explained.
He's been called 'crooked' and 'low-life' by President Trump.
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'I have always suspected Shifty Adam Schiff was a scam artist,' Trump wrote in July on Truth Social.
5 President Trump has slammed Schiff as 'shifty' and 'crooked.'
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Schiff is accused of wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud and making false statements to financial institutions, charges which carry prison terms of up to 30 years.
He has denied wrongdoing and called the investigation a political witch hunt.
'Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason,' Schiff wrote on X when news of the investigation broke in July.
5 Schiff has slammed the federal investigation against him as politically motivated.
REUTERS
'This is just Donald Trump's latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies.'
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'Adam Schiff's baseless smears of corruption against President Trump and Republicans have one simple explanation — he's projecting,' Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kiersten Pels told The Post.
'Schiff is a proven liar, a con man, and a fraud,' Pels added.
Schiff did not return requests for comment.
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