Trump seeks to fire Lisa Cook as Fed governor : NPR
President Trump has moved to dismiss the governor of the federal reserve, Lisa Cook, in a climbing of Trump’s campaign to assert more control over the Central Bank.
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
hide
tilting legend
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
President Trump moved to dismiss Lisa Cook on Monday, governor of the federal reserve, degenerating his campaign to exercise more control over the Central Bank.
In an article on social networks, Trump said that he rejected Cook in response to the ally of an ally of Trump that she had made false declarations on a mortgage request.
Under the federal law designed to isolate the central political bank of political pressures, fed governors can only be removed for good reason. Trump said he had determined that there was a sufficient cause to shoot Cook.
“The American people must be able to have fully confidence in the honesty of the members responsible for defining the policy and supervising the federal reserve,” wrote Trump in a letter addressed to Cook. “In the light of your misleading and potentially criminal conduct in financial matters, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity.”
Earlier this month, Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist who oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accused Cook of mortgage fraud, citing two interior loans that she obtained a few weeks apart in 2021, before joining the federal reserve. The two properties were in Michigan and Georgia. Pulte said that Cook said each property would be used as a main residence – a declaration which often results in more favorable loan conditions.
Cook did not respond in detail to the allegations, saying that she collects information, but she insisted last week that she would not be “intimidated”. The Fed did not immediately respond to the request for comments after Trump’s position on Monday evening.
The effort of the late Cook intervenes in the middle of a high pressure campaign of Trump and its allies to bring the central bank to reduce interest rates. Trump already has the opportunity to appoint a new member to the Fed board of directors, after the surprise resignation of Adriana Kugler at the beginning of the month. Kugler completed his mandate a few months earlier to return to teaching in Georgetown.
If Trump succeeds in ousting Cook, it would create another vacancy, potentially giving Trump the majority of the board of directors of seven members.
The dismissal could invite a legal challenge, because the Fed is designed to operate independently of the White House.
“The illegal attempt to dismiss Lisa Cook is the last example of desperate president looking for a scapegoat to cover her own inability to reduce costs for the Americans,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the best democrat of the Senate Banks Committee, which supervises the Fed. “It is an authoritarian takeover which openly violates the law on the federal reserve and must be canceled before the court.”
