"Trump's motivation is plain: He wants to kick Cook off the Fed so he can install a loyalist who will lower interest rates. Just hours after he moved to terminate Cook, Trump boasted, "We'll have a majority very shortly. So that'll be great ... We have to get the rates down a little bit." Enter Bill Pulte, the rabid loyalist who has donated over $1 million to Trump's political operations and now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency."
"At some point, we'll learn who is giving Pulte his marching orders and why he seemingly has focused exclusively on high-profile Democrats, but not Republicans. On its face, Pulte's use of his regulatory powers to scrounge for dirt evokes the IRS targeting scandal that rocked the Obama administration in the mid-2010s (though there was nothing in that case to tie Obama himself to the effort)."
The Supreme Court warned that the president cannot remove Federal Reserve governors without legal cause, yet President Trump appears likely to succeed in removing Lisa Cook. Trump aims to replace Cook with a loyalist to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates, and he publicly celebrated the prospect of gaining a sympathetic majority. Bill Pulte, a major Trump donor and head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, referred Cook to law enforcement alleging mortgage fraud, prompting a DOJ inquiry. The Federal Reserve Act permits removal "for cause," and a judge signaled that presidential motive may be legally immaterial.
Read at Intelligencer
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