White House Forms Committee to Probe Federal Reserve’s Cook

This is part of, like the never ending saga of President Trump going after fed governors, um, including Jay Powell. Obviously, um, there's been indications that he may be interested in going after Michael Barr, but the Lisa Cooke case was actually has been litigated. It's been going on for over a year now. Um, if you recall, last year, President Trump, um, purportedly fired her. She challenged that in court. Case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Supreme court said, uh, the firing was improper because, uh, the president didn't give her notice and an opportunity to respond. Due process. Due process, essentially. Um, so, um, that happened. That decision came down in June, uh, in early August. The president sent her a letter, ostensibly to satisfy this notice requirement that the Supreme Court, uh, wrote about, uh, gave her three weeks to respond. Um, you know, the allegations concerning, uh, mortgage fraud and the she, um, didn't indicate that certain homes were going to be secondary homes and not primary homes. Um, she responded to that letter. And then we had silence for about a month until today. And, uh, according to reports, it looks like he's setting up some sort of, um, committee in the white House to investigate, uh, you know, the allegations. Um, and I presume that he will use that as a basis to fire her. Again, what can I just as a I mean, what this is a what is a white House committee? What kind of juice do they have? Yeah. Who, who? I don't know, I haven't seen them. I mean, is there any precedent for this? I mean, you know, there's there's committees. You know, the first committee that comes to mind is the committee to really like the president. Oh, okay. Oh, I think the acronym was creep. Exactly. Um, I don't know who's on the committee. I haven't seen the memo. Yeah, it's true that the news reports allude to, um, when I get back. By the way, this mortgage fraud, if he added up, if if that actually happened, I think it works out to like $50 or some, like ridiculous amount of money. It's not like she got a much more favorable rate because it was. Yeah. Exactly. And I mean, her letter responding to, um, you know, the allegations go through all that and say, you know, this was just one errant inadvertent mistake. There were other documents that she submitted to the lenders that had all the correct information concerning the same properties. And, you know, one thing that's important is sort of in passing because it wasn't, um, actually decided by the Supreme Court, but in the Supreme Court's opinion, they said, um, you know, for cause, which is the standard here, probably requires some sort of unfitness for office. And so something to do with how she does the job. Um, the I mean, they didn't get into the specifics of that so that we don't know that yet. Oh, I see that's going to be litigated. Right. If the president tries to fire her again, she's going to challenge it again. She won't be able to challenge a no decent opportunity. Uh, prong probably she'll have to challenge what Ford cars actually requires. And we're going to go through this all again, and maybe we get back up to the Supreme Court again. I believe there was also reporting to show that there are other members of the administration who've done similar things right, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bass and, um, and others. Okay. Anybody who knows Donald Trump and from dealing with him in New York City when he was the real estate whatever mogul, um, using the courts, using endless lawsuits to try to tire out the other side, whether or not it's justified or not. That's a strategy for the the you know, this he feels very comfortable in court. And I mean, you know, which goes back to Roy Cohn, I should point out to probably I mean, the number of lawsuits related to this administration, um, is pretty unprecedented on both sides. I mean, it's pretty unprecedented to see some of the lawsuits the president himself has brought. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned something about how, um, Trump wants to also get rid of, uh, Jay Powell, who's now a Fed Reserve governor. Right. Um, he's no longer the chair because Kevin washes, but he's still sitting on the fed board. What has President Trump done recently to try to do that? Right. So, um, there, if you recall, um, the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington. Washington, D.C., had opened up a, uh, potential fraud investigation, right, related to cost overruns, uh, related to the bed renovation, the fed headquarters renovation. Um, Maurice's nomination was held up for a while by Senator Thom Tillis because he was concerned about, you know, this, um, fraud investigation. Um, the fraud investigation went on hold. Voice was confirmed. The fed itself has had its own internal review by the inspector general. They released a report just in the last couple of weeks saying no indications of any sort of crime here. Mhm. Um, so, you know, unlikely to see the U.S. Attorney's office, the Justice Department reopened that investigation, but it doesn't mean the president can't go after him for cause and try to fire him. Right. I don't I don't see a strong case, but that's never stopped the administration. They say, but it doesn't mean they can't try.