Lisa Cook, governor of the US Federal Reserve, speaks at the Peterson Institute For International Economics in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Friday he will fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she does not resign from her position.
“What she did was bad,” the president told reporters who asked about Cook, an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has come under fire from the Trump administration over allegations about her mortgages.
“So I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign,” he said during an impromptu visit to The People’s House, a museum of the White House.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte this week publicly accused Cook of mortgage fraud related to claims that she took two different properties as her primary residence at the same time.
He sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, which revealed Thursday that it will investigate Cook.
Pulte, a vocal critic of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell who has aggressively backed Trump’s calls for the central bank to lower interest rates, has continuously attacked Cook on social media since revealing his allegations.
Trump previously called for Cook to resign immediately in light of the allegations. Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who is widely seen as a loyalist to the president, urged Powell to promptly remove Cook — even though the central bank chief cannot do so under the law.
Cook has consistently voted in line with Powell. She sided with the majority to keep rates unchanged following the Federal Open Market Committee’s most recent meeting last month.
Cook said Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”
“I learned from the media that FHFA Director William Pulte posted on social media that he was making a criminal referral based on a mortgage application from four years ago, before I joined the Federal Reserve,” Cook said in a statement.
“I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts,” she said.
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