White House renews push to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook after Supreme Court required proper notice

The Trump administration has sent Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook a formal letter signaling her potential removal over mortgage fraud allegations, reviving a months-long confrontation the Supreme Court paused but never fully resolved.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino sent Cook the letter this week, telling her that President Trump was "considering removing you from your position" and giving her until August 26 to respond. The move follows a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in June that blocked Trump's initial attempt to fire Cook but left the door open for a second try, provided the administration gave her notice and a chance to contest the charges.

Cook, a Biden appointee to the Fed's Board of Governors, now faces the same underlying allegation that prompted her initial ouster last August: a criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte accusing her of mortgage fraud. Pulte alleged Cook declared two different homes, one in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and one in Atlanta, as her "primary residence" to obtain more favorable mortgage rates. No charges have been brought against Cook to date.

Cook's attorney calls the timing "suspicious" and the charges baseless

Abbe Lowell, Cook's attorney, told reporters the renewed effort was expected but still raised questions about motive.

"If you know anything about President Trump... he doesn't take no for an answer whether the no is an advisor or the Supreme Court, so this is not a shock."

Lowell pointed to Cook's recent public criticism of the most recent jobs report, in which she argued the administration was not doing enough to fight inflation. He called the timing "a little suspicious" and pushed back directly on the fraud allegation.

"Not withstanding their allegation, I can unequivocally state that there is not a chance Governor Cook committed mortgage fraud."

Cook herself has framed the fight in blunt terms, saying Trump attempted to oust her "on a manufactured pretext because I refused to bow to political pressure and continued to set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people." Her legal team has called the misconduct claim "unprecedented and illegal" and vowed to challenge this latest effort in court.

The administration's position rests on the Federal Reserve Act, which states that each member of the Board of Governors "shall hold office for a term of fourteen years from the expiration of the term of his predecessor, unless sooner removed for cause by the President." The White House argues the mortgage fraud allegation satisfies the "for cause" standard. Cook and her lawyers disagree, and the lower courts have so far sided with Cook, ruling she did not receive due process when Trump first moved to fire her.

June's Supreme Court showdown split the bench and reshaped presidential power

The June ruling that paused Cook's removal was a narrow one. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts, and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson formed the five-vote majority. Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, pressed the administration's top lawyer, John Sauer, during oral arguments on what an unchecked removal power would mean for the central bank.

"There's a very low bar for cause, and one that the President alone determines. And that would weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve that we just discussed."

Alito raised his own concerns, noting that "no court has ever explored those facts" surrounding the allegations against Cook and citing the "very hurried manner" in which the administration moved to remove her. The Court's solution was procedural: Cook could stay in her post at least as long as her lawsuit challenging the firing continued, but the administration could try again with proper notice. Chief Justice Roberts' opinion, as the New York Post reported, explicitly stated that "only after Cook has had the opportunity to respond to the charges made against her... may a final decision be made."

That is precisely what the Scavino letter now sets in motion. The August 26 deadline gives Cook roughly three weeks to mount her defense, a window her legal team appears ready to use.

The broader fight over presidential removal power extends well beyond the Fed. The same Supreme Court term produced a separate 6-3 ruling that green-lit Trump's effort to fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. That decision overturned more than 90 years of precedent rooted in the 1935 Humphrey's Executor case, which had long shielded members of independent agencies from at-will presidential removal. Roberts, writing for the majority in that case, was unequivocal: "If anything more is left of Humphrey's, we overrule it." The ruling gives current and future presidents significantly more power to reshape the boards of dozens of federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Supreme Court's broader affirmation of presidential removal authority earlier this year set the legal backdrop for this new confrontation with the Fed.

Fed independence faces its sharpest test in 112 years

Trump became the first president in the Federal Reserve's nearly 112-year history to attempt to fire a sitting governor. The central bank's members are shielded by law from removal without cause, a protection designed to keep monetary policy insulated from election-year politics. Cook's case puts that protection under direct pressure.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself weighed in on the stakes during the earlier round of litigation. As Fox News reported, Powell said, "The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president." Thomas Dupree, a former top Justice Department attorney, told the same outlet that "Trump is pushing at every limit and the Supreme Court this term is going to be telling us whether he's exceeded those limits."

The administration's appeal of the lower-court ruling in Cook's favor remains pending, meaning the legal battle will continue on multiple fronts simultaneously. Cook's lawyers have signaled they will fight the new removal effort with the same vigor they brought to the first round, and the procedural framework the Supreme Court laid down in June gives them a clear path to do so.

The mortgage fraud allegation, two homes listed as a primary residence, remains the stated basis for removal. National Review noted that the legal standard under the Federal Reserve Act sets a specific but largely untested threshold: removal "for cause." Whether a criminal referral that has produced no charges meets that bar is the question Cook's legal team intends to answer in court.

Pulte, who made the referral, has since moved into a different role in the administration. Trump tapped the housing regulator as acting intelligence chief earlier this year, a personnel decision that drew its own scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Justice Sotomayor, who joined the majority keeping Cook in place, penned a lengthy dissent in the separate FTC ruling and read it aloud from the bench, a rare step that signals deep disagreement. She warned that the Court had discarded "the democratic regime created by the Constitution... in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority's theory of unitary, total executive control." Her conclusion: "The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before."

That expanded power is now being tested again, this time with a formal notice letter, a three-week deadline, and a legal system that has already shown it will not rubber-stamp the administration's approach. The Senate resistance to some of Trump's personnel moves underscores that the president's authority to reshape the executive branch, while growing, still faces friction from both the judiciary and members of his own party.

Cook remains at the Fed for now. But the administration has made clear it views the June ruling not as a final answer but as a set of instructions, instructions it is now following to the letter.

If the mortgage fraud allegation holds up under scrutiny, the removal is justified and overdue. If it does not, the administration will have spent a year trying to fire a Fed governor over paperwork that no prosecutor has seen fit to charge. Either way, the public deserves an answer, and August 26 is when the clock runs out.