President Donald Trump on Friday announced the creation of a three-person committee to investigate allegations of mortgage fraud against Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. The news came in a notice that was published on the White House website just over two months after Trump notified Cook that he was considering her removal, and less than four months after a divided Supreme Court blocked Trump’s initial efforts to fire Cook.
“As President,” Trump wrote, “it is my job to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law.”
Cook has strongly contested the mortgage fraud allegations, and other financial records appear to undermine the Trump administration’s claims.
The dispute began more than a year ago, when Trump posted screenshots on social media of a letter to Cook in which he fired her. Trump alleged that Cook, who began serving on the Fed in 2022 and was nominated to a full 14-year term by then-President Joe Biden in 2023, had committed mortgage fraud in 2021 by listing two different homes – a condo in Georgia and a house in Michigan – as her primary residence on mortgage applications, making her eligible for more favorable terms.
The lower courts allowed Cook to remain in office while she challenged Trump’s decision. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb concluded that Cook was “substantially likely” to show that Trump had violated federal law when he fired her because the law allowing the president to fire a Federal Reserve governor “for cause” does not extend to removing a board member for her conduct before she took office. The firing also violated Cook’s constitutional right to fair treatment, Cobb said, because she did not have notice and an opportunity to contest her firing before it occurred.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit left Cobb’s order in place while Cook’s challenge continued. The majority agreed that Cook was likely to succeed on her claim that she did not receive all of the procedural protections to which she was entitled under the due process clause of the Constitution before she was fired.
The Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, asking it to pause Cobb’s order. But the justices declined to do so, instead setting the case for argument in January 2026.
By a vote of 5-4, the court on June 29 once again allowed Cook to remain in office while her challenge continued. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that (among other things), “the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the President laid against her.”
In the wake of the court’s decision, in a letter dated Aug. 5, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino notified Cook that Trump was “considering” whether to remove her from the Board of Governors. Scavino gave Cook 21 days to respond to the White House’s mortgage fraud allegations.
In her response on Aug. 27, Cook’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told Trump that the allegations against her were “unfounded and untrue.” Therefore, he said, any effort to fire Cook based on those allegations would be “corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve” for the Federal Reserve Bank.
The notice that Trump released on Friday designated three senior officials in the Trump administration to serve on the newly formed committee: Kevin Hassett, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy; Andrea Lucas, the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and Keith Sonderling, who serves as the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics (as well as the Secretary of Labor).
Trump’s notice instructed the committee to hold a hearing, which will not be open to the public, at the White House on Nov. 5. At that hearing, Trump said, the members of the committee may question Cook, while she will also have the opportunity to present arguments and evidence. If Cook opts to submit a post-hearing statement, he added, it is due by Nov. 10, and the committee should “submit written findings of fact and conclusions of law to me” and make a recommendation regarding whether Cook should be removed “[a]s soon as practicable after” that.
