By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) -Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Tuesday laid out in greater detail her opposition to President Donald Trump’s bid to remove her from office, saying it was too late to fire her for mortgage information she disclosed during her confirmation process.
In a filing in U.S. District Court, Cook said she listed mortgages on three properties on forms submitted to the White House and U.S. Senate in the vetting process for her appointment to the Fed in 2022. Any inconsistencies were known when she was confirmed and cannot give Trump grounds to fire her now, she said.
Trump and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte, whom Trump appointed, have accused her of committing fraud by listing all three properties as primary residences when she applied for mortgages, potentially to secure lower interest rates.
Trump has said that gives him cause to fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor.
She has filed a lawsuit seeking to block her unprecedented removal, setting up a legal battle that could upend long-established norms for the Fed’s independence. Tuesday’s filing reiterated in greater detail arguments she made in court last week as part of the lawsuit.
In the filing, Cook said that on a background check form, she listed a property in Michigan as a primary residence and one in Georgia as a “2nd home.” On a separate questionnaire she listed both homes as her “present residence,” the Michigan property as her “current permanent residence,” and a third property in Massachusetts as both a present residence and a second home and rental property, she said.
“If those are facial contradictions, as the Government and President claim … Senators or White House advisors could have inquired of her about any alleged ‘facial inconsistencies,'” Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in the filing.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cook has asked U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C., to temporarily block Trump from removing her from her post pending further litigation. She says that Trump does not have the legal authority to remove her and that the fraud allegations were a pretext to do so.
Cobb held a hearing on Friday where a Trump administration lawyer argued that removing a Fed governor for cause is within the president’s broad powers and Cobb had no power to review it.
Trump, a Republican, attacked the Fed for not cutting interest rates during his first term in the White House and resumed that campaign when his second term began in January. He has berated Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though he has stopped threatening to remove Powell before his term as central bank chief ends in May.
The Fed cut rates three times in 2024 but has held them steady since December out of concern that Trump’s aggressive reshaping of U.S. trade policy could boost inflation. Cook voted with Powell and the majority of the central bank’s rate-setting committee in all those policy decisions.
The central bank, however, is widely expected to reduce its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point from the current 4.25%-4.50% range at its September 16-17 policy meeting. Trump has demanded a far more aggressive decrease in borrowing costs.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman)
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