Donald Trump has dismissed Fed Gouverneur Lisa Cook, the first black woman on the board, about claims for mortgage fraud, and his push to reform leadership. (a file photo) Photocredit: Jim Urquhart/Reuters
US President Donald Trump took the unprecedented action on Monday to dismiss Lisa Cook, the first African-American woman who served as governor of the Federal Reserve, about claims of mortgage loans.
The president had called Cook to resign on 20 August after the American federal housing financing agency Director William Pulte, who was appointed by Trump, accused her of claiming two of her mortgages as primary homes. The US Department of Justice said it had investigated the case.
“I have established that there is sufficient reason to remove you from your position,” Trump said in a letter to Cook posted on his social social platform.
Trump said there was sufficient evidence that Cook had made false statements about mortgage applications. “Minimally, the behavior of the behavior shows the type of gross negligence in financial transactions that question your competence and reliability as a financial regulator.”
Cook had been challenging to continue with the Fed.
Cook called the charges politically driven
“I am not going to be bullied to resign from my position because of some questions asked in a tweet,” she said on August 20. “I intend to take questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve, and so I collect the accurate information to answer all legitimate questions and to give the facts.”
Cook, who was nominated by the FED Board of Directors in 2022 by the former President Joe Biden, welcomed the mortgages in 2021 when she was an academic. An official financial disclosure form for 2024 provides an overview of three mortgages of Cook, with two mentioned as personal homes.
Pulte has claimed that Cook has committed mortgage fraud by mentioning two of its mortgages as its primary home, but he has not provided public evidence to support his claim. Loans for primary homes can bear lower loan speeds.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television on August 21, Pulte said that Cook’s alleged fraud is “self -evident” and is easy to see in publicly available documents. Pulte also said that the issues were discovered as part of regular investigation rather than by a political witch hunt against those who have been opposed by the Trump government.
Trump -Push coincides with reversing diversity initiatives
The claims from Pulte against Cook coincide with a broad effort of the Trump government against diversity, fairness and inclusion programs in the US government, a process that led to the departure of some prominent women and minorities.
The Trump government has also focused on other political opponents, including the US Senator Adam Schiff, with similar accusations of mortgage fraud.
Printing campaign
Shooting Cook marked an escalation in Trump’s attempt to reform the makeup of the leadership of the Fed. He has put pressure on the central bank for aggressive tariff reductions at a time when FED officials have kept them stable in the midst of constant concerns about inflation.
The president has regularly threatened to dismiss FED chairman Jerome Powell, who was nominated by Trump during his first term in the White House and is then nominated by Biden for a second term. Trump, who lacks the legal authority to dismiss the FED chairman, except “for cause”, has withdrawn from that threat as Powell gets closer to the end of his term of office as Fed Chief.
Cook’s exit from the FED – she had served in a period that ended at 2038 – was able to accelerate the reform of the President of the FED.
He recently raised Fed Governor Michelle Bowman as the top bank regulator of the Central Bank and is assumed that he is considering Fed Governor Christopher Waller, whom he named after the board in 2020, to succeed Powell.
Two other Biden agreements in the Fed Board have some time left in their conditions, while until 2028 Powell could remain as head of the Central Bank after the end of his term of office as governor.
Financial issues have been a regular problem for American officials from the Central Bank in recent years. In 2021, the then presidents of the Dallas and Boston Banken both declined after revelations of active trade in financial markets.
Although both were later cleaned up by the internal watchdog of the Fed of misconduct, the Inspector General of the Central Bank said that their trade created the appearance of a conflict of interest. In response to the controversy, the Fed supplemented its ethical rules for the personal investment of officials.
Published August 26, 2025
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