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Fire Cook
Posted on: September 5, 2025 at 13:12:20 CT
Ace UNC
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The Supreme Court has forewarned President Donald Trump that it won’t let him fire members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for any reason he sees fit. But he’ll likely succeed in his overtly political effort to remove Lisa Cook from her post.
Trump’s motivation is plain: He wants to kick Cook off the Fed so he can install a loyalist who will lower interest rates. Just hours after he moved to terminate Cook, Trump boasted, “We’ll have a majority very shortly [on the seven-member Fed]. So that’ll be great… We have to get the rates down a little bit.”
Enter Bill Pulte, the rabid loyalist who has donated over $1 million to Trump’s political operations and now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In August, Pulte sent a letter to AG Pam Bondi and her clueless, hyper-partisan attack dog, Ed Martin, accusing Cook of mortgage fraud – one in a series of splashy criminal referrals from this obscure regulatory agency. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into Cook based on Pulte’s referral.
At some point, we’ll learn who is giving Pulte his marching orders, and why he seemingly has focused exclusively on high-profile Democrats, but not Republicans. On its face, Pulte’s use of his regulatory powers to scrounge for dirt evokes the IRS targeting scandal that rocked the Obama administration in the mid-2010s (though there was nothing in that case to tie Obama himself to the effort).
But political motives matter little, if at all, under the law that governs Cook’s tenure with the Fed. The Federal Reserve Act, which established the agency itself in 1913, empowers the president to remove Fed governors “for cause.” District Court Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee presiding over Cook’s wrongful termination lawsuit, appeared to conclude that the President’s underlying motivation is immaterial. When Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, argued in court last week that Trump had actually fired her because he wants the Fed to lower interest rates, the Judge was unmoved: “I’m unconformable with the pretext argument,” she said.
So, bad faith motives aside, does Trump have sufficient cause to fire Cook? Pulte’s first referral letter to DOJ alleges that, within a two-week period in 2021, Cook obtained a mortgage on a home in Michigan that she claimed was her “principal residence” – and then a second mortgage on a home in Georgia that she claimed as a “primary residence.” Pulte further alleges that Cook promptly placed the second property up for rent, contrary to her “primary residence” claim. (Generally, principal and primary residences are eligible for better mortgage interest rates and tax benefits unavailable to secondary homes or rental properties.)
And in a follow-up letter, Pulte accused Cook of obtaining a third mortgage in Massachusetts and claiming that property would be a “second home.” However, in subsequent tax filings, she indicated that that home was an “investment / rental property.” Pulte notes that “second homes receive lower mortgage costs than rental properties, because investment properties are inherently riskier.”
it’s tough to credit a claim that Cook was baffled by routine mortgage paperwork, given her status as one of the country’s most accomplished economic minds.
Trump’s motivation is plain: He wants to kick Cook off the Fed so he can install a loyalist who will lower interest rates. Just hours after he moved to terminate Cook, Trump boasted, “We’ll have a majority very shortly [on the seven-member Fed]. So that’ll be great… We have to get the rates down a little bit.”
Enter Bill Pulte, the rabid loyalist who has donated over $1 million to Trump’s political operations and now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In August, Pulte sent a letter to AG Pam Bondi and her clueless, hyper-partisan attack dog, Ed Martin, accusing Cook of mortgage fraud – one in a series of splashy criminal referrals from this obscure regulatory agency. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into Cook based on Pulte’s referral.
At some point, we’ll learn who is giving Pulte his marching orders, and why he seemingly has focused exclusively on high-profile Democrats, but not Republicans. On its face, Pulte’s use of his regulatory powers to scrounge for dirt evokes the IRS targeting scandal that rocked the Obama administration in the mid-2010s (though there was nothing in that case to tie Obama himself to the effort).
But political motives matter little, if at all, under the law that governs Cook’s tenure with the Fed. The Federal Reserve Act, which established the agency itself in 1913, empowers the president to remove Fed governors “for cause.” District Court Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee presiding over Cook’s wrongful termination lawsuit, appeared to conclude that the President’s underlying motivation is immaterial. When Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, argued in court last week that Trump had actually fired her because he wants the Fed to lower interest rates, the Judge was unmoved: “I’m unconformable with the pretext argument,” she said.
So, bad faith motives aside, does Trump have sufficient cause to fire Cook? Pulte’s first referral letter to DOJ alleges that, within a two-week period in 2021, Cook obtained a mortgage on a home in Michigan that she claimed was her “principal residence” – and then a second mortgage on a home in Georgia that she claimed as a “primary residence.” Pulte further alleges that Cook promptly placed the second property up for rent, contrary to her “primary residence” claim. (Generally, principal and primary residences are eligible for better mortgage interest rates and tax benefits unavailable to secondary homes or rental properties.)
And in a follow-up letter, Pulte accused Cook of obtaining a third mortgage in Massachusetts and claiming that property would be a “second home.” However, in subsequent tax filings, she indicated that that home was an “investment / rental property.” Pulte notes that “second homes receive lower mortgage costs than rental properties, because investment properties are inherently riskier.”
it’s tough to credit a claim that Cook was baffled by routine mortgage paperwork, given her status as one of the country’s most accomplished economic minds.
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Fire Cook - Ace UNC - 9/5 13:12:20