Trump's committee to fire Lisa Cook subverts due process
By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta ·
President Donald Trump established a White House committee to remove Governor Lisa Cook, but appointing his own aides to manufacture statutory cause subverts the due process required by law.
President Donald Trump is attempting to buy a legal result through a manufactured process. By establishing a "committee of inquiry" to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, the President is not seeking the truth about mortgage instruments. He is seeking a loophole. CNBC and CNN report that the Federal Reserve Act protects governors from being fired on a whim. Removal requires "cause," a legal standard meaning inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Trump is wrong because he is treating a statutory protection as a mere clerical hurdle.
The fiction of "for cause"
The administration argues that it is simply following the law. They claim the President must ensure laws are faithfully executed by removing subordinates who cannot be trusted. They suggest this committee provides the "clear procedures" the Supreme Court demanded when it blocked Trump's first attempt to fire Cook in June, as reported by CNN and Asharq Al-Awsat.
This argument fails because due process requires an impartial arbiter. A hearing is not a hearing if the judges are the accuser's employees. CNBC notes that the committee consists of three members: Kevin Hassett, Keith Sonderling, and Andrea Lucas. Hassett is the President's top economic aide. Sonderling is the Labor secretary. Lucas is the EEOC Chair. This is a tribunal of loyalists, not a legal proceeding.
A tribunal of loyalists
The composition of the panel reveals the intent. Kevin Hassett worked in the Fed's research division from 1992 to 1997. He was also on the short list to replace Jerome Powell. He is not a neutral investigator; he is a man who wanted the job of the person he now seeks to undermine.
Then there is Andrea Lucas. As EEOC Chair, Lucas has denied that her agency is independent from the executive branch. She has spent her tenure eliminating gender identity protections. Placing a woman who explicitly rejects agency independence on a panel to judge a statutory officer is a signal. It tells us the White House does not believe in the "cause" standard. They believe in the President's will.
This is the Saturday Night Massacre in a new suit. In that 1973 crisis, the executive attempted to bypass statutory independence protections by using personnel removal to neutralize an institutional check. Trump is using the same mechanism. He is not fighting mortgage fraud; he is fighting a board that refuses to lower interest rates.
The interest rate motive
The record shows the real defendant here is Kevin Warsh. CNN reports that Trump appointed Warsh as Fed chair in 2026. Yet, Trump is unhappy. At the September meeting, Warsh and the other 11 members of the committee voted to raise interest rates.
As covered by CNN and CNBC, Trump told Time Magazine that Warsh "shouldn't have greenlit a rate hike." He believes Warsh is blocked by a "hostile" board. By removing Lisa Cook, Trump hopes to clear the path for Warsh to act as a puppet.
The timing is not accidental. The hearing is set for Nov. 5, with the midterms on Nov. 3, as reported by Asharq Al-Awsat. The White House is scheduling this "show trial," as Senator Elizabeth Warren called it, for the morning after the election. It is a box-checking exercise designed to create a record for a second removal order.
The committee will likely find "cause" regardless of the evidence. Governor Cook's attorneys, Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, correctly note that any objective hearing would find no fraud. But this committee is not objective. It is a tool.
The White House will issue a finding of cause, and the President will fire Governor Cook. This will force the matter back to the courts. The Supreme Court must then decide if a political panel satisfies the Federal Reserve Act. If the Court allows the executive to define "cause" through its own appointees, the independence of the central bank is dead.