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President Donald Trump is taking another run at Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. On Friday, a notice posted on the White House website announced a committee that will investigate the mortgage-fraud allegations against Cook and report back to the president on whether there is “cause” to remove her. The notice is dated Oct. 7.
This is not the first attempt. Trump tried to fire Cook outright last year over allegations that she misrepresented information on mortgage documents tied to three properties. Cook sued for wrongful termination, and in June the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Trump v. Cook that the Federal Reserve Act’s “for cause” removal protection for governors is constitutionally valid and that a president must provide notice and a hearing before any removal can take effect. The court called the first attempt “erroneous and void” because proper process was never provided.
What happened since the ruling
In August, the White House gave Cook formal notice that it was considering her removal and gave her three weeks to respond. Cook responded and denied the allegations. Her lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, called the claims “as baseless now as they were a year ago” and said the administration would not meet the “cause” threshold under Supreme Court precedent.
The case is now pending before U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who has asked the parties for a joint status report by Nov. 6 on how the litigation should proceed. Friday’s committee announcement adds a new formal layer: an investigative body whose findings will go directly to Trump on the removal question.
The broader pressure campaign
The Cook fight is part of a wider assault on the Fed’s independence. This week, the Federal Reserve’s Office of Inspector General released a report on the central bank’s $2.46 billion headquarters renovation that documented project management failures but explicitly found no criminal violations and no administrative misconduct by Jerome Powell or anyone else. Powell’s term as a governor runs through January 2028, and he has said he will stay until the legal threats are resolved “with transparency and finality.”
Trump also complained about Cook in a recently published Time interview. Newly confirmed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, a Trump appointee, was mentioned in the same breath. The administration has now trained its fire on three sitting Fed governors.
Why it matters for us
The Fed sets interest rates, which touch mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and small business lending. If a president can remove governors at will, the central bank stops being independent and starts being political, and rate decisions start answering to whoever is in the White House instead of the economy. Cook is also the first Black woman ever to sit on the Fed board. A successful removal would shrink that already small circle of representation at the top of American economic policy, and it would send a signal about how much independence any institution keeps when it conflicts with the president.
