Lisa Cook: Trump 'Reportedly Did the Same Thing' as Me

Lisa Cook isn't going quietly. The Federal Reserve governor on Wednesday formally pushed back against President Trump's renewed bid to remove her from the central bank over disputed mortgage-fraud allegations. In a filing responding to this month's letter from the White House, Cook's legal team said she has neither been charged with a crime nor received any special loan terms, arguing that a 2021 form describing her Atlanta condo as a "primary" residence was an accidental error. "An inadvertent error is not fraud, as the President and a third of his cabinet should know because they reportedly did the same thing," her lawyers write, per the Hill.

Cook, who owned a primary residence in Ann Arbor, Mich., had correctly labeled the Atlanta property a vacation home earlier in the mortgage process, her lawyer tells the New York Times, questioning why Trump hasn't tried to oust Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who allegedly held two mortgages both marked as "primary" residences in 2007. Trump has been trying to fire Cook for months. In June, the Supreme Court let Cook stay in her post, with a term running to 2038, but allowed Trump to restart the removal effort so long as he allowed her to respond to the allegations of gross negligence. The fight has become a test of how far a president can go in targeting Fed officials, an institution Congress tried to shield from political pressure.