Trump renews effort to remove Fed governor Lisa Cook

President Trump is again moving to oust Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, sending her formal notice that he is considering removing her over allegations of mortgage fraud after the Supreme Court blocked his earlier attempt and said she had been denied required procedural protections.

A White House letter dated Aug. 5 and obtained by CBS News gives Cook until Aug. 26 to respond to the allegations. The letter, signed by White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, says the president is considering removing her from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors because there is “sufficient reason to believe that you made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements.” ABC News first reported the renewed effort.

The move follows a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in June that allowed Cook to remain in her post while her lawsuit challenging Trump’s earlier attempt to fire her continues. The court said Trump “failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute,” including notice and an opportunity to respond.

“Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the president laid against her,” the justices wrote, according to The Guardian.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the five-justice majority, said accepting the government’s argument that Trump could fire Cook “would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment — an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference.” He was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The allegations stem from a criminal referral sent to the Justice Department nearly a year ago by Bill Pulte, a senior housing official in the Trump administration. Pulte claimed Cook made misrepresentations on mortgage filings involving two properties, one in Michigan and one in Georgia, before she was nominated to the Fed board by former President Joe Biden. The Guardian reported that the White House accused Cook of wrongly designating separate properties in Georgia and Michigan as her primary residence and failing to report rental income on her Atlanta property for two years.

Cook has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. Her legal team has said the claims are based on “inadvertent” paperwork errors and that the administration is “cherrypicking” facts, The Guardian reported.

Scavino’s letter said the alleged actions “may be sufficient to demonstrate that you committed a crime” and argued they bear directly on her role at the central bank. “There is a distinct nexus between a basic level of trustworthiness and care in financial matters and the duties of a Member of the Board of Governors,” he wrote.

Abbe D. Lowell, one of Cook’s lawyers, called the allegations “as baseless now as they were a year ago when President Trump tried to remove Governor Cook and interfere with the independence of the Federal Reserve.”

“No matter what President Trump tries to do next, this much is clear under the facts and Supreme Court precedent – there is no valid cause for removing Governor Cook,” Lowell said in a statement. “As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed.”

Cook was appointed by Biden in 2022 to a 14-year term ending in 2038, The Guardian reported. She is the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor. Before joining the Fed, she served on Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and taught at Harvard University and Stanford University.

The White House did not immediately respond to The Guardian’s request for comment.