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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Supreme Court appeared skeptical on Wednesday of President Trump’s effort to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, an authority that most experts say would jeopardize the independence of the world’s premier central bank.
The issue before the justices in the case involving Fed Governor Lisa Cook is whether, as the Trump administration had argued, once the president determines he has cause to fire a Fed board member, that decision will not be reviewable by any court. Cook’s lawyers argued that firing a Fed official without judicial review would ultimately be devastating to the Fed’s independence.
The administration claims Cook falsified documents to obtain loans on two different properties listed as his primary residence. Her lawyers say she has listed one property as a vacation home. The charges against him were initially filed by Bill Pulte, the head of Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency. Cook denied wrongdoing. His lawyers, in court papers, point to recent reports that four members of Trump’s Cabinet, his deputy attorney general and even Pulte’s own relatives have recently applied for multiple hostages similar to Cook’s, without any suggestion of wrongdoing.
It is not clear what the Supreme Court will do. In other cases last year, the court’s conservative majority allowed Trump to fire other agency leaders, at least temporarily overriding federal laws that had protected term-limited agency heads from firing. But at the same time, the court’s conservatives said in a cryptic piece of emergency docket opinion that the Fed is different because it is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows the distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States.” The first Congress created the first bank in 1791, and the second in 1816.
However, if Trump wins, he will almost certainly seek to replace not only Cook, but other Fed governors. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s term as Fed chairman ends this spring, but he has two more years left on his term as Fed governor. Unless Trump is able to remove sitting governors, his appointees will not have a majority on the board during the remainder of his presidency.
This is a developing story and will be updated
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