Trump asks judge to let him fire Lisa Cook without delay

Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, began that session by asking Cobb to keep in place the “status quo” — Cook remaining in her job for — while he, Trump’s lawyer, and other interested parties lay out arguments in court filings on whether the president has the power to terminate her.

Cobb said, “This case obviously raises some important questions that may be of first impression, particularly as it applies to this board.”

Trump’s lawyers in his filing said Cook’s lawsuit is not likely to succeed, and that it is up to the “discretion of the President” on whether there is legal cause, as required by federal law, to remove a Fed Board governor.

If Trump succeeds in firing Cook, he would be on track to have nominated a majority of the seven-member Board, which sets interest rates. Trump has criticized the Board for months for not cutting those rates, which he has argued would boost the U.S. economy and reduce the federal government’s cost of financing its debt.

Cook, who is the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, argues that Trump has no such cause for firing her. She was nominated to the Board by then-President Joe Biden in 2022, and her current 14-year term is due to expire in January 2038.

Trump says he wants to fire Cook because of allegations by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that she committed mortgage fraud in connection with documents she signed related to two residential properties, in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Michigan, before she joined the Fed.

On Thursday night, Pulte said he had filed a second criminal referral against Cook with the Department of Justice related to a mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and alleged misrepresentations she made about that condo and the two other homes in government ethics filings during her time as a Fed governor.

Lowell on Friday called Pulte’s new referral “an obvious smear campaign aimed at discrediting Gov. Cook by a political operative who has taken to social media more than 30 times in the last two days and demanded her removal before any review of the facts or evidence.”

“Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board,” Lowell said.

Cook sued Trump, the Fed Board of Governors, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday. The suit says that Trump’s firing of her is illegal, and asks Cobb for an order keeping her on the job while the case is litigated.

“You can’t have Director Pulte’s crazy midnight tweets be the cause,” Lowell told Cobb at the court hearing.

Powell and the Fed Board were sued only to the extent that they could, at some point, seek to execute Trump’s desire to fire her.

The Fed, in its court filing Friday, told Cobb that it intends ” to follow any order this Court issues.”

The Supreme Court is likely to end up resolving the dispute.

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