St. Pete business leader’s conversation with Trump captured on tape in impeachment inquiry

A newly released recording captures St. Petersburg businessman Bill Edwards advocating for a streamlined home loan program for veterans with President Donald Trump, according to a report published Thursday night by The Washington Post and republished by MSN.

The recording was made in April 2018 at a donor event at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida estate.

Edwards, who previously owned a veterans loan refinancing firm, complained that a provision in pending legislation would eliminate the streamlined lending program. Trump said he was unaware of the provision, which ended up being incorporated into law in late 2018.

Edwards told the Post on Thursday he was already out of the mortgage business at the time of the conversation and that he had nothing to gain by advocating against the provision.

The Post said it got the recording from Joseph Bondy, the attorney for Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Parnas has been cooperating with the House impeachment investigators and Bondy told the Post he previously gave a copy of the recording to those investigators.

The recording occurred about 10 days before a separate video at a Washington hotel, in which Trump called for firing the ambassador to Ukraine.

The two recordings provide a window into Trump’s close interactions with high-dollar donors, according to the Post. Edwards is a noted donor to Republican candidates.

His many business interest include Sundial, the entertainment center downtown, and the Mahaffey Theater-Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. He previously owned Mortgage Investors Corp., which was one of the largest refinancers of Department of Veterans Affairs loans.

He closed Mortgage Investors in 2013, saying Dodd-Frank financial reforms made it too onerous to operate. That same year, the company agreed to pay a $7.5 million civil penalty for allegedly violating Do Not Call provisions that were part of the Federal Trade Commission’s telemarketing rules.

In the recording, Edwards complains about the provision in legislation to revise the Dodd-Frank act. The Post said he appeared to be referring to a measure introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Warren said the provision was designed to eliminate a practice known as churning, in which home loans are repeatedly refinanced to generate fees for lenders.

Edwards said the measure would eliminate a streamlined program to allow veterans to lower their interest rates on mortgages through refinancing without having to go through appraisals and surveys. He called it “the most effective program on the planet.”

“I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that veterans were going to take a beating on this,” Edwards, a retired Marine and advocate for veterans, told the Post.