Trump administration renews push to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook ahead of key vote
Government said Cook’s legal arguments for why she should stay in the job were meritless. She has been accused of mortgage fraud
US President Donald Trump’s administration renewed its request on Sunday for a federal appeal court to let him fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, a move the president is seeking ahead of the central bank’s vote on interest rates.
The Trump administration filed a response just ahead of a Sunday deadline to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, arguing that Cook’s legal arguments for why she should stay in the job were meritless.
Lawyers for Cook argued in a Saturday filing that the Trump administration has not shown sufficient cause to fire her, and stressed the risks to the economy and country if the president were allowed to fire a Fed governor without proper cause.
Sunday’s filing is the latest step in an unprecedented effort by the White House to shape the historically independent Federal Reserve. Cook’s firing marks the first time in the central bank’s 112-year history that a president has tried to fire a governor.
“The public and the executive share an interest in ensuring the integrity of the Federal Reserve,” Trump’s lawyers argued in Sunday’s filing. “And that requires respecting the president’s statutory authority to remove governors ‘for cause’ when such cause arises.”
Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has accused Cook of signing separate documents in which she allegedly said that both an Atlanta property and a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan were “primary residences”. Pulte submitted a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which has opened an investigation.