Trump calls on Fed Governor Cook to resign from mortgage claims
President Donald Trump has called on Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook to step down after allegations over mortgages he holds in Michigan and Georgia.
NEW YORK – President Donald Trump took the unprecedented action on August 25th, firing Lisa Cook, the first African-American woman to work as Federal Reserve Governor over allegations of mortgage borrowing fraud.
The president was calling for Cook to step down on August 20 after Trump-appointed director of the US Federal Housing and Finance Agency, William Prute, of claiming her two mortgages as primary residences. The Justice Department said it is investigating the issue.
“I have determined that there is enough cause to remove you from your position,” Trump said in a culinary letter posted on his true social platform. Trump said there was ample evidence that Cook made false statements about his mortgage application.
“At the very least, the act in question shows a kind of gross negligence in a financial transaction that challenges your ability and reliability as a financial regulator,” he said.
Cook was rebelling against moving forward with the Fed.
“I’m not going to be bullied to step down from my position due to some of the questions raised in the tweet,” she said on August 20.
Cook, who was appointed to the federal board by former President Joe Biden in 2022, took away the mortgage in question in 2021 when she was an academic. The official financial disclosure form for 2024 lists three mortgages held by Cook, two listed as private homes.
Pulte claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud by listing two mortgages as major residences, but he does not provide any official evidence to support his allegations. Loans in major residences can carry lower borrowing rates.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV on August 21, Pulte said Cook’s alleged fraud was “trivial” and could be easily seen in published documents. Palt also said the issue came to light not through a political witch hunt against those who opposed the Trump administration, but as part of a regular investigation.
Pulte’s claims to Cook coincided with the Trump administration’s broad efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the US government, a process that led to the departure of several prominent women and minorities.
The Trump administration has also targeted other political opponents, including US Sen. Adam Schiff, and is receiving similar accusations of mortgage fraud.
Pressure Campaign
The layoffs of the chef marked an escalation of Trump’s attempts to restructure the structure of the Fed’s leadership ranks. He has put pressure on central banks to aggressively cut interest rates as Fed officials stabilized them amid ongoing concerns about inflation.
The president regularly threatens to fire Trump-appointed Chairman Jerome Powell, who was appointed by Trump during his first term in the White House and later appointed by Biden for a second term. Lacking legal authority to fire the Fed’s chairman except for “Because of a Cause,” Trump has retreated from the threat as Powell approaches the expiration of his term as Fed chief in May next year.
Cook’s exit from the Fed – she served during an expired period in 2038 – was able to speed up the Fed’s restructuring.
He is believed to be considering Governor Michelle Bowman recently to the central bank’s top bank regulator and Governor Christopher Waller, who was appointed to the board in 2020.
The appointments of two other Biden on the Fed Committee leave some time on their terms, but Powell was able to remain governor until 2028 after his term as head of the central bank.
In recent years, fiscal issues have been a regular issue for US Central Bank employees. In 2021, then-chairmen of Dallas and Boston banks both resigned after revelation of aggressive trading in financial markets.
Both were later cleared by an internal watchdog of the Fed’s fraud, but even so, central bank inspectors said their transactions had created the emergence of conflicts of interest. In response to the controversy, the Fed has strengthened ethical rules governing private investments in officials.
(Reporting by Michael S. Derby, Additional Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Editing by Paul Simao, Caitlin Webber, and Lincoln Feast.)
