Pulte Appoints 1789 Capital's Omeed Malik to Fannie Mae Board; Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee Seat Alongside FHFA Director as Chair
Pulte Appoints 1789 Capital’s Omeed Malik to Fannie Mae Board
On April 14, 2025, FHFA Director Bill Pulte appointed Omeed Malik — founder and President of 1789 Capital, the Palm Beach venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. joined as a Partner in November 2024 — to the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise that together with Freddie Mac backstops approximately $7 trillion of U.S. residential mortgages. The appointment was effective immediately. Pulte announced it on X roughly 20 minutes after posting that “news on Fannie Mae [was] coming shortly” (Bisnow, April 15, 2025).
Pulte’s quoted statement: “Omeed brings great capital markets, legal and investment experience as we make Fannie and Freddie great again.” Fannie Mae’s shares climbed roughly 14% in trading that Monday (Bisnow).
What Happened
The April 14 appointment came 27 days after Pulte’s March 17-18 purge of 14 directors across the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac boards — the Fannie Mae 8 being Amy Alving, Christopher Brummer, Michael Heid, Simon Johnson, Diane Lye, Diane Nordin, Chetlur Ragavan, and Michael Seelig. At the March 17-18 purge, Pulte appointed himself Chairman of both GSEs’ boards while continuing to serve as the federal regulator (FHFA Director) with conservatorship authority over the same entities — a structural arrangement no prior FHFA Director has attempted.
Malik filled one of the eight vacant Fannie Mae seats. Unlike the purged directors — who included an MIT economist (Simon Johnson), a Georgetown securities-regulation professor (Christopher Brummer), a former HSBC Americas executive (Michael Heid), and a former Promontory Financial partner (Chetlur Ragavan) — Malik has no publicly documented prior real-estate-finance or GSE regulatory experience. His background is hedge-fund advisory (Bank of America Merrill Lynch, 2010s), merchant banking (Farvahar Partners, 2018-present), and conservative venture capital (1789 Capital, 2022-present).
Committee Assignment
Per Fannie Mae’s current corporate-governance page (fanniemae.com/about-us/corporate-governance/fannie-mae-board-committees), Malik serves as a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. As of the page’s April 24, 2026 revision the committee has three members (until that revision it had two, Pulte and Malik):
- William J. Pulte (Chair) — FHFA Director
- Omeed Malik — 1789 Capital founder; Don Jr.’s business partner
- Michael Stucky — Vice Chair
Malik does not serve on the Audit, Compensation and Human Capital, or Risk Policy and Capital committees.
A small Nominating/Governance Committee chaired by the FHFA Director, with the FHFA Director’s own appointees among its members, concentrates director-recruitment and governance-policy authority in the FHFA Director and his Trump-family-capital appointee. In a pre-IPO governance context, this committee recommends board composition changes material to any S-1 or registration statement.
Fannie Mae’s Q1 2025 10-Q noted that at filing, the Board had “not yet considered Malik’s independence status or committee assignments” and had not decided “any potential disclosures regarding his relationships or transactions” — meaning the Nominating/Governance Committee placement was assigned after the Q1 filing.
Current Board Composition (as of April 2026)
- William J. Pulte — Chair
- Michael Stucky — Vice Chair
- Barry Habib
- Brandon Hamara
- Clinton Jones (FHFA General Counsel; dual-seated with Freddie Mac)
- Omeed Malik
- Manuel “Manolo” Sánchez Rodríguez
- Scott D. Stowell
Notable turnover since April 2025: Christopher Stanley (SpaceX/X cybersecurity engineer; appointed March 2025) resigned one day after appointment. Priscilla Almodovar (Fannie Mae CEO) was out by October 2025 (Inman, 2025-10-22). Renée L. Glover and Karin J. Kimbrough, named as concurrent April 2025 directors in Bloomberg and National Mortgage News coverage, no longer appear on the current governance page.
The Pre-Existing Pulte-Malik Financial Tie
Before the Fannie Mae appointment, the Pulte Family Office — whose chairman is named as William J. Pulte — took a position in GrabAGun, an online firearms retailer going public through Colombier Acquisition Corp II (NYSE: CLBR). The Pulte Family Office investment was announced January 2025 via PR Newswire, with William J. Pulte quoted on the $99.5 million revenue milestone and the “protecting the 2nd amendment” framing.
Key facts establishing the tie:
- GrabAGun is a 1789 Capital portfolio company; Malik is a founding figure in the Colombier SPAC series taking GrabAGun public
- Donald Trump Jr. was nominated to the GrabAGun board in March 2025 (Bisnow) and joined it when the merger closed in July 2025, with a prospectus projecting about 300,000 shares, roughly 1% (CNBC)
- The Pulte Family Office position was announced three months before Bill Pulte (as FHFA Director) appointed Malik to the Fannie Mae Board
- Bill Pulte’s relationship to the Pulte Family Office is not a recusal-triggering separation — his OGE Form 278e discloses Pulte Capital Partners LLC, Mullett Holdings III LLC, and other overlapping family-office-adjacent holdings
This establishes a documented pre-appointment financial-interest overlap between the two principals (Pulte and Malik) through shared participation in the same portfolio company via their respective investment vehicles — a fact relevant to any post-hoc conflicts-of-interest analysis.
Ethics Disclosure State
No public ethics disclosure, recusal agreement, or conflicts-of-interest filing specific to Malik’s Fannie Mae directorship has been located as of April 2026. Fannie Mae’s governance page does not post individual director financial-disclosure forms. There is no evidence that Malik has recused from board or committee votes affecting:
- The planned GSE IPO structure, allocation plan, or underwriter selection
- Real-estate-lending policy affecting 1789 Capital’s planned $1B real-estate fund (Frisbie Group partnership; Bloomberg September 2025)
- GrabAGun / Colombier SPAC series matters that overlap the Pulte Family Office’s equity position
- Donald Trump Jr.-connected matters (1789 Capital governance, partner compensation, or portfolio-company policy exposure)
Why This Matters — GSE-IPO Access Scope
The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2025, citing unnamed sources, that the administration planned to sell 5% to 15% of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a combined valuation of about $500 billion, raising roughly $30 billion (HousingWire, Aug. 8, 2025). Treasury Secretary Bessent said a 3% to 6% stake would bring in at least about $30 billion (NPR, Feb. 3, 2026). Bank of America’s and Citigroup’s leadership met Trump in the Oval Office in August 2025 as banks competed to underwrite the offering, and JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs were also seeking the business (Fox Business, Aug. 15, 2025).
A Fannie Mae board seat in this window confers access to:
- Pre-IPO valuation models
- Underwriter-selection materials
- Allocation plans (retail vs. institutional, insider vs. public, Trump-aligned-investor participation)
- Capital-shortfall disclosures (Fannie reported a $33 billion ERCF capital gap in Q1 2025; Freddie $162 billion)
- Non-public GSE operational information: credit policy, guarantee fees, credit-score framework changes, and conservatorship-exit planning
NPR’s February 3, 2026 report (“Privatizing Fannie Mae is risky. Would it be a win for taxpayers or Trump’s donors?”) said critics warn that unwinding the conservatorship could “rattle financial markets and drive up mortgage rates, while potentially generating billions of dollars for key Trump supporters” (NPR does not mention Malik). Malik — the President’s son’s principal business partner — holds one of eight Fannie Mae board seats as the IPO is structured.
Structural Significance
Four overlapping dimensions:
First-degree personnel overlap between 1789 Capital governance and federal housing-finance policy. Malik simultaneously runs the Don Jr. venture vehicle and sits inside the federal GSE Pulte chairs.
Regulator-as-Chairman appointing his business counterparty as Governance-Committee partner. Pulte (FHFA Director + Fannie Mae Chair) appointed Malik (1789 Capital) to the Nominating/Governance Committee, concentrating director-recruitment authority in a financially-pre-connected pair.
Trump-family-equity-in-federal-regulator pattern. The Malik appointment is the housing-finance counterpart to the broader Pipeline 2 pattern: Kushner at Affinity Partners / QIA; Witkoff as envoy while Witkoff Group expands; Trump Jr. at 1789 Capital alongside $735M in Year-1 Trump administration contracts to portfolio companies; Eric Trump at American Bitcoin and Trump Organization Dar Global expansion.
Pre-IPO access without documented recusal. With the Trump administration preparing a GSE IPO that would generate transaction fees, allocation opportunities, and post-privatization equity upside, Malik’s board seat provides governance-level access to the offering’s structure with no public evidence of recusal from 1789 Capital or Pulte-family-adjacent-holdings matters.
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Sources & Citations
The Cascade Ledger. “Pulte Appoints 1789 Capital's Omeed Malik to Fannie Mae Board; Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee Seat Alongside FHFA Director as Chair.” The Capture Cascade Timeline, April 14, 2025. https://capturecascade.org/event/2025-04-14--malik-appointed-fannie-mae-board/