President Donald Trump mentioned Friday he’ll fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she doesn’t resign from her place.
“What she did was bad,” the president informed reporters who requested about Cook, an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has come below fire from the Trump administration over allegations about her mortgages.
“So I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign,” he mentioned throughout a shock go to to The People’s House, a museum of the White House.
If Trump have been to efficiently take away Cook “for cause,” he would get the possibility to reshape the central financial institution’s governing board, probably for years to come back.
U.S. President Donald Trump visits The People’s House: A White House Experience museum, in Washington D.C., U.S., August 22, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Two of the seven present governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, are Trump appointees. Both dissented from the Fed’s most up-to-date determination to carry rates of interest regular.
Another seat opened up earlier this summer time, when Adriana Kugler introduced she would step down.
If Trump is ready to take away Cook, he would appoint her successor — probably guaranteeing {that a} majority of the board shares his view on financial coverage. Board members serve 14-year phrases.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte this week publicly accused Cook of mortgage fraud associated to claims that she took two completely different properties as her main residence on the similar time.
He despatched a felony referral to the Department of Justice, which revealed Thursday that it’s going to examine Cook.
Pulte, a vocal critic of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell who has aggressively backed Trump’s requires the central financial institution to decrease rates of interest, has repeatedly attacked Cook on social media since revealing his allegations.
Trump beforehand known as for Cook to resign instantly in gentle of the allegations. Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who’s broadly seen as a loyalist to the president, urged Powell to promptly take away Cook — although the central financial institution chief cannot do so below the legislation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the highest Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote in an X post Friday that Trump is concentrating on Cook as a result of he’s “trying to find a scapegoat for his failure to lower costs for Americans.”
Cook has persistently voted in step with Powell. She sided with the bulk to maintain charges unchanged following the Federal Open Market Committee’s most up-to-date assembly final month.
Cook said Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”
“I learned from the media that FHFA Director William Pulte posted on social media that he was making a criminal referral based on a mortgage application from four years ago, before I joined the Federal Reserve,” Cook mentioned in a press release.
“I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts,” she mentioned.
Trump’s feedback Friday morning got here as Powell signaled that financial circumstances “may warrant” rate of interest cuts.
While the economic system and labor market stay resilient, draw back dangers are rising and progress is declining — and Trump’s tariffs are as soon as once more elevating inflation issues, Powell said on the Fed’s annual convention in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
