US President Donald Trump on Monday, August 25, has fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over mortgage fraud. Trump shared a termination letter to Cook on his social media platform Truth Social, alleging that she had made false statements on her applications for home mortgages.
“In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, [the American people] cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity,” Trump wrote to Cook, who is the first Black woman to serve as a governor of the Federal Reserve.
“At a minimum, the conduct that issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator."
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Congress condemned the president’s authority to unilaterally fire a Fed governor in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which states that president can only do so “for cause.”
The termination of Cook's comes after months of complaints by Trump about the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, for not cutting interest rates as the president has demanded they do.