Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook will file a lawsuit to prevent President Donald Trump from firing her, Reuters quoted a lawyer for the embattled central bank official on Tuesday, kicking off what could be a protracted legal fight over the White House’s effort to shape U.S. monetary policy.
“His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action,” Cook’s lawyer, prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.
The statement was issued a day after Trump said he would fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the central bank’s governing body, for alleged “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct” related to mortgages she took out in 2021.
Since returning to office in January, the president has sacked a number of civil servants, dismantled several agencies and withheld billions of dollars of spending authorised by Congress.
“We need people that are 100% above board, and it doesn’t seem like she was,” Trump told reporters at a meeting. He said he had several “good people” in mind to replace Cook, but would abide by any court decision that left her in her job.
Trump pressured the Fed to lower interest rates during his first term in the White House, and he has escalated that campaign in recent months. He also demanded that rates be cut by several percentage points and threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, although he recently backed down from that.