特朗普再次威胁解雇美联储理事丽莎·库克

This is [music] Bloomberg Law with June Graasso from Bloomberg Radio.

Is another legal fight over the Fed's independence ahead as President Trump is threatening to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook a second time. The Supreme Court in a 5 to4 decision in June allowed Cook to remain in her job while she fought Trump's bid to oust her over mortgage fraud accusations, faulting the president for not giving her notice and a chance to be heard before trying to remove her. Now, the Trump administration has sent Cook a letter saying Trump is considering removing her and giving her until August 26th to respond to the same allegations of mortgage fraud.

Joining me is constitutional law expert Harold Krent, a professor at the Chicago Kent College of Law. In its decision, the Supreme Court didn't specifically say what notice and comment to Cook was required. The Trump administration is giving her three weeks to respond. Do you think that meets the procedural protections the court envisioned? So a cornerstone of due process under the Supreme Court's rulings for the past generation have been you have notice and opportunity to be heard.

The notice has to be reprise you of what the charges are against you. The opportunity to be heard can be very flexible, can be informal. And so I think in this respect, President Trump is following the marching orders from the court and giving an informal opportunity for Lisa Cook to respond to the charges. fact she cooked up the books with respect to the mortgage. The real question though is what's going to happen afterward because she is going to respond and then he is you know extremely likely to ignore the responses and say that he has caused for her dismissal and then dismiss her.

Obviously, this coke will go to court and then the court has to make a decision as to whether to reinstate her pending a more complete trial on the merits. What does cause mean? Does cause equal the fact that this was a mortgage fraud or was it not a mortgage fraud? Sort of two issues there. uh you know whether cause can relate to something that's not related to conduct in office and obviously the mortgage fraud was way before she became a Federal Reserve officer and the other issue is you know was it fraud at all and so I think that the real issue here is not this notice and opportunity to be heard it's what's going to happen after Trump removes her she's going to run to court and the court's going to have to make a balance about likelihood of success on the merits, the awkwardness of trying to force a president to deal with an officer whom the president has tried to remove and it's going to be a very close case.

So, so Cook can only be dismissed for cause, but in his opinion, the Chief Justice didn't make clear what for cause actually is, but he said he thought the administration's definition was too lenient and the defense's definition was too stringent.

I mean, first of all, there's factual disagreement as to whether what she did on her mortgage application constitutes fraud or nothing at all. Right? So that's one issue here. And then the question is um as you suggest is how big of an error prior to somebody being appointed equals cost. I mean in my mind I am somewhat empathetic to President Trump's position in the score. If someone committed a murder and then it becomes uncovered before they're in office, that might be reason to remove them. or if somebody even commits some kind of serious financial fraud and then is appointed to the Fed.

If that financial fraud is uncovered later, that might be caused to remove somebody because nobody's going to have faith in their sort of unbiased performance of the job. Here it's more minor. It's well before she is appointed to the office. And so the courts now have this unchartered waters of deciding whether that kind of allegation would be sufficient to equal cause for removal. And there's not a really good signpost in the Chief Justice's opinion.

But again, there's also a factual dispute. Is what she did fraud or not? There's a lot of allegations out there. Doesn't mean that she did anything wrong whatsoever.

The Justice Department was sent a referral for prosecution by Bill Py who was then what the FHFA director. And they opened a criminal investigation into whether she committed mortgage fraud, but they've never charged her with anything. Now maybe Todd Blanch now as AG will please the president and charge her. But where does it fit in that they haven't charged her?

I don't think that's directly relevant here because I think what the president would say is we don't have to have a criminal investigation in order to equal cause. We just have to be able to be convinced that misconduct occurred which would impair her ability to effectively discharge the responsibilities of the office. you can decouple a criminal investigation or criminal charges with misconduct, sufficient misconduct to constitute cause for removal.

Um, so I think that the president is clear on that score. But again, there's a whole big factual dispute that courts would have to resolve whether what she did does constitute fraud and second whether the fraud is significant enough to constitute cause for her removal some 5 to 10 years later from from the office. Would she be entitled to a jury trial then on that?

We've never seen this happen before, so we don't know if there would be a jury trial. I don't think there would be a jury trial, but there would have to be a hearing and the court would have to to get evidence and then make a decision again what factually happened and whether the whatever h happened factually, whether that constitutes cause for removal. and what the court has never held whether you can have someone remain in office while these charges are being adjudicated.

Now her term, Lisa Cook's term, goes, I think 2038. So she could be reinstated even if there is a six-month delay in a hearing. But on the other hand, will the court order that she remain in the office pending this hearing whether it lasts six months, nine months or is more expedited? So again, unchartered waters. Um and it's sort of amazing that the president just kept his vendetta going. um because this is just going to be more anguish, more headlines and it really doesn't put the president in a very powerful light what he wants to even escort.

Will she raise the allegation that this is a vindictive prosecution? They went after her, but also they tried to go after Jerome Powell. Janine Piro, the US attorney, has said that's not dead. Even though, you know, a judge wouldn't even give her a subpoena for what she wanted from Powell.

Part of her argument will be this is pretext just as it was with Jerome Powell. And that will be factored in. But again, the real the first big legal question is will a court order that she remain in office pending this hearing? And that's something that's not a simple question u because it is really sort of undermining the president's authority to govern by forcing somebody to remain in office that the president doesn't want in the office.

So that's going to be part of the calculus that that the court is going to have to grapple with in deciding whether or not she can stay in office before hearing all of these charges, including the vindictive prosecution charges. She's going to have a very good argument given what PY has done in other contexts.

I mean, is the president supposed to be working with the Fed board? Isn't the Fed board supposed to be independent? Is that the whole idea?

But the Fed chair, as we know, does regulate banks, too? And the president has the ability to call officers who are protected from removal and job own them and talk about regulation strategy. And so this would be appropriate for the president to do so for for part of it. And you know the question would be and again whether the courts would say because of this independence that the Supreme Court found with respect to the Fed it's