SCOTUS Skeptical Trump’s Truth Social Posts Count As Due Process

Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up in a single line Wednesday morning’s two-hour oral arguments on whether or not Trump could fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

“This whole thing is not regular.”

Although the Cook case does not explicitly address the Federal Reserve’s right to be free from political manipulation, the court’s decision will have resounding implications for the independence of the U.S. central bank, which has been preserved since the agency’s founding 112 years ago.

Cook’s attorneys’ arguments revolved around two claims: that Cook was not given due process between the time members of the Trump administration accused her of criminal mortgage fraud and Trump’s attempt to fire her, and that the “for cause” standard of removal, as defined in the law, had not been met. The Trump administration argued that the president gave Cook ample notice in an unconventional way: a message from Truth Social.

The judges were skeptical. The elephant in the room all along has been how to evaluate the actions of a president who relies on social media to make and announce policy decisions that could, for example, upend international trade or send the military into cities and states. How much weight can and should courts give to a president’s social media posts as an official action?

Cook has denied any wrongdoing in the matter, and the Trump administration has regularly concocted baseless mortgage fraud allegations against perceived enemies of the president as part of a systematic retaliation machine. A lower court and an appeals court stayed the eviction until Cook’s case was fully argued.

Cook’s lawyers say she did not receive sufficient notice or a hearing, as required by law, before Trump attempted to fire her. And on Wednesday, at least some judges seemed to agree.

The irregularity of the case began “starting with Truth Social’s opinion, or treating it as an opinion at all,” Sotomayor said with a laugh in the final moments of closing arguments. Truth Social’s post, she said, “certainly wasn’t an invitation to be heard.”

A key point of the government’s argument, as presented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, is that Cook actually received notice and time to respond via Trump’s prolific presence on Truth Social. His post about Cook’s firing for mortgage fraud and screenshots of alleged evidence posted online launched the five-day deadline Cook had to respond, Sauer claimed. Many judges seemed unconvinced.

When Sauer said the administration followed legal process and gave Cook ample opportunity to state his case publicly, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson facetiously asked whether Cook’s own public presentation should have been a social media post. Sauer replied simply: “Yes. »

Moments later, Justice Neil Gorsuch made the government’s argument that the president should grant Cook only minimal process. How much? Sauer reiterated that Trump’s message on Truth Social, particularly “the five-day window between Truth Social’s message and the dismissal letter,” was sufficient to inform Cook of the allegations against her.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett emphasized Cook’s right to due process at different points during the proceedings, leading Sauer to reiterate again and again that Trump’s online behavior was the key to the Fed governor’s firing, and to add a clarification that it is ultimately up to the president to determine what due process that is.

It’s a bizarre and almost harmless affair, with very serious consequences. On Wednesday, the justices challenged the idea that a president who lives virtually online and posts some of his most important statements through the social media platform he owns need only post on that platform to initiate the due process required by law to remove a Federal Reserve governor “for cause.” And even those who were most supportive of Trump’s expansion of executive power didn’t seem to embrace that philosophy.

Asking whether mortgage documents that allegedly reveal alleged fraud were in the record in that case, conservative Justice Samuel Alito forced Sauer to admit that they might not be, pointing instead to social media.

“I know the text of the social media post that captures the mortgage applications is in the record, but I don’t recall if the documents themselves are in the district court file,” Sauer said.

The admission led Alito, normally a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda, to admit that the administration’s handling of Cook’s case has been “superficial.”

This whole affair brings the Supreme Court justices face to face with the contradiction they created, holding that Trump had the right to fire officers from independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission, but perhaps not from another extremely important independent agency: the Federal Reserve. The Fed, as some judges have argued in other independent agency cases, is a unique entity, protected from presidential excesses because of its historical context and role in monetary policy.

Experts told TPM that this is a difficult needle to thread, given the agency’s 2025 Court rulings.