Lisa Cook, governor of the US Federal Reserve, and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images | Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Friday morning asked a judge in a court filing to deny a request by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook to issue an order barring Trump from firing her as her lawsuit challenging her removal plays out in court.
The Fed, in a separate court filing, said it would make no arguments on the merits of Cook’s request to temporarily block her termination by Trump.
But the central bank also asked Judge Jia Cobb to issue a “prompt ruling” to resolve the dispute.
The filings were made approximately two hours before a scheduled hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Cook’s request for a temporary restraining order to prevent her removal.
Trump says he wants to fire Cook because of allegations by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that she committed mortgage fraud in connection with documents she signed related to two residential properties, in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Michigan, before she joined the Fed.
On Thursday night, Pulte said he had filed a second criminal referral against Cook with the Department of Justice related to a mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and alleged misrepresentations she made about that condo and the two other homes in government ethics filings during her time as a Fed governor.
Cook’s lawyer Abbe Lowell on Friday called Pulte’s new referral “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.”
“Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board,” Lowell said.
Cook sued Trump, the Fed Board of Governors and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday. The suit says that Trump’s firing of her is illegal, and asked Cobb for an order keeping her on the job while the case was litigated.
Powell and the Fed Board were sued only to the extent that they could, at some point, seek to execute Trump’s desire to fire her.
The Fed, in its court filing Friday, told Cobb that it intends ” to “follow any order this Court issues.”
The Supreme Court is likely to end up resolving the dispute.
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