The Utah Attorney General’s Office has charged state Rep. Trevor Lee with two counts of fraud and two forgery-related counts stemming from allegedly falsified documents related to the mortgage on his Layton home.

[Read more: Before Rep. Trevor Lee, these lawbreaker Utah lawmakers resigned after being charged with crimes]

Lee, a 35-year-old Republican who lost his reelection bid in the June primary, promptly resigned his House seat after the charges were filed in 3rd District Court. The Salt Lake Tribune confirmed in July that the attorney general’s office was investigating Lee.

“Due to personal circumstances that require my attention, I no longer feel I can give my constituents the time, attention, and service they deserve,” Lee said in a statement. “I will always be grateful for the people I have met, the relationships I have built, and the opportunity I have had to serve the people of Utah.”

House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, who was a key donor to Lee’s reelection campaign, said in a statement: “I appreciate Rep. Lee’s service and accept his resignation.” Lee would have remained in the House through December.

The charges accuse Lee of having falsified a contract with a company named Enevive — including forging the signature of its CEO — purporting to show that he made $168,000 annually from the business in order to get a $1 million home loan from Kind Lending last year.

Trent Spafford, the CEO of Enevive, recorded videos of conversations with Lee and one, according to the court documents, shows Lee asking for a $93,000 advance so he could get the home loan.

He also allegedly said “he would make Spafford ‘whole’ by securing Spafford’s company a government contract with Hill Air Force Base,” the documents said.

He also submitted to the mortgage company an employment offer from another business, Blue Logic, and represented that he worked full-time there as sales director with a salary of $190,000 a year — although Lee never worked for the business, the documents said.

“Based on the loan file and interviews,” an investigator for the attorney general’s office wrote, “Lee submitted to Kind Lending, through the mortgage lending process, employment and income documents he knew to be false — including a forged Enevive employment contract, an inflated Enevive income figure contradicted by his own W-2, and a Blue Logic offer letter he knew did not reflect genuine employment or payable income — in order to obtain a $1 million loan.”

The loan was structured as a refinancing to return $317,190 in cash to Lee, the investigator wrote, specifying documents the lawmaker signed in August 2025. At least two warned that it is illegal to submit false information in a mortgage application, court documents said.

The counts of communications fraud and mortgage fraud filed against Lee are second-degree felonies, which, upon conviction, are punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A count of forgery and a count of possessing a forged document are third-degree felonies, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The investigation begins

Sgt. Gregory Smith was assigned to the case on April 28, he wrote, and he began “with two videos and screenshots of conversations relating to a prior check-fraud incident.”

The attorney general’s office started investigating Lee after two of his former employers accused him of fraud in April, just days before delegates were scheduled to vote on whether he should advance to the primary election.

One allegation dated back to 2013, when Lee worked as a salesperson in North Carolina for a Utah-based pest control company; the other was from Spafford, who alleged Lee owed Enevive nearly $100,000 in advance payments.

While charging documents referred to elements of those claims, they were not the basis for the charges, which detail Lee’s efforts to secure the home loan.

The two companies that Lee allegedly submitted false documents from — Enevive and Blue Logic — both make water filtration systems.

Last year, Enevive sued Lee, several of its own former employees and Blue Logic in federal court for allegedly violating nondisclosure agreements and taking advantage of Enevive’s proprietary information.

Enevive voluntarily dropped the lawsuit in April, court records indicate. In a previous interview, Spafford said the case had become “too emotionally draining, and we would have never been compensated. We were into it $50,000.”

Blue Logic is owned by Jared Bayless and Chris Watson, Smith wrote. Watson “stated that Blue Logic had made Lee an offer that Lee never accepted, that Lee asked for the letter to help obtain a home loan, that Lee was a contract employee rather than a full-time employee, and that the letter was prepared to help Lee as a friend and was not accurate,” court documents said.

Bayless and Watson both confirmed the job offer and verification letters were provided to help Lee obtain the loan “with no intention of following through,” Smith wrote. Lee admitted that Blue Logic’s offer was used to help show income on his W-2 tax form, Smith wrote, and that he knew the business “would never be able to pay” it.

When The Tribune contacted Lee in July about the investigation by the attorney general’s office, he said, “there’s nothing there, and I’m not worried because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

In April, Lee lost the vote by delegates to GOP challenger Davis County Commissioner Bob Stevenson, but he secured just enough support — 45% to 55% — to have his name included on the June ballot. He ultimately lost the primary.

A conservative firebrand

In 2022, state Republican leaders rebuked Lee for having run a now-deleted Twitter account aligned with the “DezNat” movement, a conservative religious philosophy. On the account, Lee attacked Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and LGBTQ+ people.

Lee made national headlines in 2025 when he sponsored a bill that sought to ban pride flags in schools and government buildings. When presenting the bill, Lee noted that teachers would still be able to display Confederate and Nazi flags when teaching history, which drew ire from many Utahns.

Lee’s bill was later passed by lawmakers, and Cox allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

The next year, Lee constructed much of his legislative agenda around stripping public benefits from immigrants, including a supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, meal delivery programs for seniors, vaccinations, housing assistance, homeless services, communicable disease treatment and potentially other services.

“We give benefits to those who are not citizens of our country, and I believe that’s wrong,” Lee told The Tribune. “I think we have enough problems. We have Utahns who need help, who are struggling, who can barely afford their bills, and we shouldn’t be allocating taxpayer funding of any sort, at least on the state side, to those who are noncitizens.”

The bill attracted significant pushback, including from some Republicans, and did not pass the House. Parts of the bill were moved into another piece of immigration legislation, which passed the House but not the Senate.

Lee also sponsored a bill seeking to revoke anti-discrimination protections for transgender people and to rename Salt Lake City’s Harvey Milk Boulevard to Charlie Kirk Boulevard. His street renaming bill never received a vote, and Lee ultimately failed to pass any legislation during the 2026 session.