All right, if you managed to make it to the second page, we’ll elaborate slightly. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court recently made a point of inventing a new legal standard carving out the Federal Reserve Bank from Trump’s assertion of unchecked power to fire officers of statutorily independent agencies. They based this decision on their deeply principled opinion that they didn’t want their stock portfolios to take a hit. To get around this, Trump has a housing official, William Pulte, combing the fine print on lending documents as a pretext to harass government officials he doesn’t like with mortgage fraud accusations.
Of note, Donald Trump is the only one in this story who actually, conclusively lied to lenders about real estate values.
Trump’s mortgage fraud crusade against NY AG Tish James is on the rocks, so he’s moved on to attacking another prominent Black woman in the form of Fed governor Lisa Cook. In his letter purporting to fire her, he claims that the bare allegation of mortgage fraud — that he’s the one making — allows him to fire her “for cause.” The allegation that she listed a property as her primary residence that might not have ended up her primary residence not only fails to speak to her official malfeasance or incompetence to perform her job — the relevant standard — but we don’t even need to reach that point because she’s not been indicted of anything, much less convicted of anything.
Any media outlet describing Trump as having “fired” Cook as opposed to “claiming” or “purporting” or “delusionally pretending” to fire Cook is doing a disservice to the reality here.
Cook has hired Abbe Lowell. If Trump wants to remove her, he’ll need the Supreme Court to go along with his zany theory. Which they might, but given the way stocks started tanking in after hours trading, this might be the hill they’re willing to die on.