Trump makes a fresh push to oust Fed Governor Lisa Cook before the central bank meets this week
A new legal filing came as new documents showed Cook labeled her Atlanta condo a second home, undercutting Trump's fraud claims
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Donald Trump pressed ahead Sunday with his efforts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, just as the central bank prepares to vote on interest rates this week.
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Lawyers for Trump filed papers with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, saying Cook’s case for staying on the Fed board was “meritless.”
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“The public and the executive share an interest in ensuring the integrity of the Federal Reserve,” they wrote. “And that requires respecting the president’s statutory authority to remove governors ‘for cause’ when such cause arises.”
Trump’s order last month to fire Cook marked the first attempt by a president in the Fed’s 112-year history to dismiss a governor. She has since challenged the decision in court, and a federal judge ruled last week that her removal was unlawful, reinstating her to the board.
The move preserved Cook’s seat on the central bank’s board, for the moment, and will likely allow Cook to participate in the Federal Open Market Committee's much-anticipated policy meeting this week. Prediction markets show a widespread expectation that the Fed will cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
The push to unseat Cook relates to claims by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, who alleged that Cook had claimed two different properties as her primary residence, one in Atlanta and another in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
However, newly revealed documents show that Cook described the Atlanta condominium as a “vacation home” in a May 2021 loan estimate and as a “2nd home” in a security clearance form later that year, Reuters reports. Experts said would undermine claims of mortgage fraud.
Property records also indicated that Cook never applied for a tax break that would have only been available if the Atlanta property had been listed as her main home.
Pulte has said Cook “made misrepresentations about her mortgages to the Federal Government when she was a Governor,” which Cook has denied.
Cook, who has denied any wrongdoing, joined the Fed in 2022 after being nominated by then-President Joe Biden. Her lawyers say any errors were clerical and that the allegations are a pretext for Trump to install loyalists who will do his bidding, undermining the central bank’s historic independence from political interference.
—Catherine Baab contributed to this article.