Trump Lawyers Renew Push To Oust a Fed Governor, Lisa Cook, Ahead of Pivotal Interest Rate Meeting

The Justice Department is now claiming that President Trump has unfettered authority to dismiss a Federal Reserve board member, Lisa Cook, because he is the sole arbiter of what constitutes “cause” for removal. Ms. Cook has been accused of committing mortgage fraud by a Trump administration political appointee, though there are not yet any criminal charges or civil action to back up those claims.A district court judge has already blocked Mr. Trump from trying to dismiss Ms. Cook from her position. The administration is now demanding that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit move to block Ms. Cook from participating in this week’s Federal Reserve meeting to set interest rates. In a court filing Sunday, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that no court has the right to block Mr. Trump from firing Ms. Cook. They say that a president dismissing a Fed governor is an “unreviewable exercise of the discretion Congress vested in him.”The lawyers write that Mr. Trump alone can decide when to fire Ms. Cook “for cause” because there is no “specification of the causes” that merit dismissal in the federal statute. The lack of specificity, they argue, grants the president the power to dismiss Ms. Cook without being questioned by anyone. They claim that the president’s decision to dismiss her is necessary, because the claims of mortgage fraud go directly to the question of “whether Cook can be trusted to act with forthrightness, care, and disinterest in managing the U.S. money supply.”She has been accused of committing mortgage fraud by the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, who was appointed to the job early in the second Trump term. His family, over the course of three generations, made their money in residential home construction. According to a report from Reuters, Ms. Cook did not commit “mortgage fraud,” as Mr. Pulte has alleged. He claims that the Fed governor listed properties in both Georgia and Michigan as primary residences, though Reuters reports that the Georgia home was actually listed as a vacation residence in paperwork at the credit union from which she obtained the loan. The Justice Department has appealed its case to the higher court on an emergency basis, hoping to block her from voting during this week’s Federal Reserve board meeting to set interest rates. Mr. Trump himself has been demanding for months that the central bank cut rates, and Ms. Cook has voted to keep rates steady since he returned to the White House. “The public and the Executive share an interest in ensuring the integrity of the Federal Reserve, and that requires respecting the President’s statutory authority to remove Governors ‘for cause’ when such cause arises,” the Justice Department lawyers said in Sunday’s filing.The Fed’s Board of Governors are scheduled to meet later this week and are widely expected to lower interest rates by at least 25 basis points, or a quarter of percentage point, but administration officials have been pushing for a decrease of half a percentage point or more. Key factors in the decision are likely to be signs of a weakening labor market along with consumer price increases tied to Mr. Trump’s import tax regime.

Trump Lawyers Renew Push To Oust a Fed Governor, Lisa Cook, Ahead of Pivotal Interest Rate Meeting

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