Susie Lee’s Double Game: Cashing Checks From Foreclosure Kingpin While Nevada Families Get Screwed Out of a Home

Nevada Democrat Susie Lee has spent months posturing as a champion against corporate landlords driving up housing prices.

But campaign finance records tell a different story. Lee took campaign cash from Don Mullen, the Wall Street financier widely dubbed a foreclosure kingpin whose firm has grown into one of the largest corporate landlords in Nevada and across the country.

Mullen is the founder and president of Pretium Partners, a New York hedge fund that has quietly amassed thousands of homes nationwide, including a massive footprint in Clark County. As Nevada families struggle to buy their first home, corporate buyers backed by Wall Street money have been scooping up properties and turning them into rentals.

In June, Lee sent a letter to federal housing regulators demanding more transparency around out-of-state corporate investors purchasing Nevada homes. The optics might have worked if Lee had not been simultaneously taking money from one of the industry’s biggest players.

Federal Election Commission records show Mullen gave Lee the maximum $2,800 contribution in 2019. Mullen has also poured more than $1.2 million into Democrat political committees, including the DCCC and House Majority PAC, which have spent millions boosting Lee and other vulnerable Democrats.

When confronted about the donations, Lee did not respond to questions from The Daily Mail about why she was accepting money from a corporate landlord widely blamed for buying up homes while middle class families are priced out.

The silence spoke volumes.

“Crooked Susie Lee is taking money from foreclosure kingpin Don Mullen, the same Wall Street operator who helped wreck America’s housing market and is now buying up homes while Nevada families get priced out. Mullen screwed America’s economy, and now Susie Lee is helping him screw Nevadans,” said NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez.

The controversy lands at a moment when housing affordability has become one of Nevada’s most explosive political issues. Corporate homebuyers have rapidly expanded their footprint in the Las Vegas valley over the last several years, buying thousands of single-family homes and converting them into rental properties.

Nevada voters have taken notice. Across the state, frustration is boiling over as young families struggle to compete with hedge funds armed with billions in capital. For many voters, the idea that a member of Congress would rail against corporate landlords in public while quietly cashing their checks behind the scenes is exactly the kind of Washington hypocrisy they have come to despise.

And in a battleground state where trust in politicians already runs thin, that kind of double game rarely ends well.

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