{"id":162431,"date":"2025-08-29T14:20:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T14:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/lisa-cook-court-hearing-fed-governor-fights-firing-by-trump-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T14:20:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T14:20:21","slug":"lisa-cook-court-hearing-fed-governor-fights-firing-by-trump-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/lisa-cook-court-hearing-fed-governor-fights-firing-by-trump-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Cook court hearing: Fed governor fights firing by Trump – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Profile
Sections
Local
tv
Featured
More From NBC
Follow NBC News
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
Lisa Cook\u2019s fight to prevent her removal from the Federal Reserve started Friday morning at a federal court in Washington, D.C.
Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board of governors<\/a>, is seeking an immediate and \u201cemergency temporary restraining order\u201d that would confirm her ability to continue in her role while the merits of her case are heard.
President Donald Trump moved to fire her<\/a> earlier this week, citing allegations of mortgage fraud brought one of his political appointees. Cook hasn’t been charged with any crime.
The battle will also likely shape much more than the future of Cook\u2019s tenure at the central bank. At stake is the independence of the Federal Reserve<\/a>, the world\u2019s most important central bank. The Fed is tasked with keeping inflation in check and the job market healthy.
As noted by JPMorgan chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli, Cook\u2019s firing from the Fed, if successful, \u201cwould create the second vacancy on the board in less than a month and would allow the president to move that body in a direction more to his liking.\u201d
\u201cIf the president were successful, the outcome would be momentous,\u201d Feroli added.
Gaining a majority on the Fed\u2019s board does not automatically give Trump\u2019s central bank nominees power to raise, lower or keep interest rates unchanged, but his nominees could, as soon as February, decline to renew or confirm a fresh four-year term for regional Fed bank presidents who get a vote on interest rates.
Those presidents are key to the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee, which comprises the Fed chair, six Fed governors and five regional Fed presidents. Those presidents come from Federal Reserve banks from New York and San Francisco to Chicago and Atlanta.
Declining to confirm certain regional presidents until they are to the liking of Trump\u2019s nominees could dramatically change the way the Fed\u2019s rate-setting committee works.
Already, two of Trump\u2019s nominees serve on the Fed\u2019s board. Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller abstained from a vote in 2023 to approve Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, to the rate-setting FOMC, according to records obtained by Bloomberg News through an open records request<\/a>.
Friday\u2019s court argument centers around allegations made by Trump\u2019s Federal Housing Finance Authority Director Bill Pulte. He has claimed that Cook committed mortgage fraud <\/a>before she became a Fed governor.
Late Thursday, Pulte said<\/a> he made a “2nd criminal referral” to the Justice Department regarding Cook’s mortgages. Pulte said it included “alleged misrepresentations about her properties to the United States Government during her time as Governor of the Federal Reserve.”
Cook’s legal team pushed back on Pulte Friday morning.
“This is 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,” they said. “Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook\u2019s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board.”
The Federal Reserve, in a filing, said it didn’t plan to offer arguments in the case but sought a “prompt ruling” that would “remove the existing cloud of uncertainty.”
The Trump administration, in turn, asked the court to deny Cook’s temporary restraining order, saying she offered no defense of the charges in public or private. “Removal for ’cause’ is a capacious standard, and one Congress has vested in the discretion of the President,” the administration’s filing said.
Cook\u2019s broader lawsuit against the administration seeks a \u201cdeclaration that President Trump\u2019s August 25, 2025 purported firing … is unlawful and void and that Governor Cook remains an active member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.\u201d She also seeks a declaration from the court that \u201cthat an unsubstantiated allegation of mortgage fraud prior to a Governor\u2019s confirmation is not cause for removal.\u201d
Under the legislation that created the Federal Reserve, the only reason a governor can be removed from their role is \u201cfor cause,\u201d which is generally seen as some kind of wrongdoing. Trump\u2019s termination letter<\/a> to Cook said that the administration believes she \u201cmay have made false statements on one or more mortgage applications.\u201d
Cook\u2019s lawyers have emphasized the use of \u201cmay\u201d in Trump\u2019s letter, saying the claims from Pulte are unsubstantiated.
Steve Kopack is a senior reporter at NBC News covering business and the economy.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ProfileSectionsLocaltvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC News news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeLisa Cook\u2019s fight to prevent her removal from the Federal Reserve started Friday morning at a federal court in Washington, D.C. Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board of governors, is seeking an immediate and \u201cemergency temporary restraining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":162432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}