It has eluded many observers, but President Donald Trump has suffered mounting legal losses lately on some of his biggest-ticket initiatives, and now comes a new ruling blocking another biggie: his firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The decision—in federal district court in Washington, D.C.—concludes that the firing broke the law because he lacked any rationale rooted in her actual conduct on the job.
Yet buried in the ruling is an amusing tidbit worth highlighting: Judge Jia Cobb cited one of Trump’s own tweets to buttress the case that he’d acted unlawfully. The judge wrote that the timing of Trump’s initial tweet calling for Cook to resign suggested she’d been denied due process. Which opens a window into a bigger story: The lower courts are doing important work in creating concrete fact sets around Trump’s illegal actions that illustrate the deep rot of bad faith eating away at their core—thus exposing an essential element of his ongoing lawlessness.
On August 20, Trump tweeted: “Cook must resign, now!!!” The tweet linked to a news story reporting that the administration had supposedly found that Cook committed “mortgage fraud,” which became Trump’s stated rationale for removing Cook. Trump needed this rationale because by law he can only remove a member of the Fed “for cause.” He needs a legitimate reason to do so, a provision that insulates the Fed’s independence from political meddling.
Trump’s stated rationale is exactly what the court knocked down. The ruling—which reinstated Cook as the case plays out—concludes that this rationale does not satisfy the “for cause” requirement. This must be “limited to grounds” involving a Fed governor’s “behavior in office” and execution of “statutory duties.” The grounds can’t be some other conduct like this “mortgage fraud” allegation, the ruling said.
Now comes the funny part. But first, some background.
Barely half an hour before Trump’s August 20 call for Cook’s resignation, a top loyalist miraculously provided the pretext for it. William Pulte, a die-hard Trumpist who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, which oversees mortgage markets, tweeted a referral he’d made to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, claiming to have evidence that Cook improperly classified multiple primary residences for mortgage purposes.
In a shocking coincidence, Pulte has “found” evidence of similar mortgage fraud by other prominent Trump foes, including California Senator Adam Schiff. The charges are an utter joke as a rationale for Trump’s actions: We’ve now learned that Trump officials and even Pulte’s relatives committed similar offenses. Pulte appears to be using his agency post to rummage through the mortgages of Trump foes to manufacture pretexts for prosecuting or firing them, which is itself a serious abuse of power.
Trump tweeted his call for Cook’s resignation around 30 minutes after Pulte’s tweet went out. It’s unlikely this could have happened without someone in the White House being fully in the loop on what was coming. Indeed, Pulte’s manipulations are likely being executed at the direction of the White House or with its assent.
This timing is exactly what the judge seized on. The ruling noted that Cook was denied due process, and one reason it cited is that Cook never got a chance to defend herself from the “mortgage fraud” charges before her removal.
“At no point did President Trump indicate that Cook would be provided an opportunity to argue that the allegations were untrue or did not merit removal,” the ruling said. “Instead, shortly after Director Pulte’s social media post was made public, President Trump called for Cook to resign—a far cry from inviting an opportunity to contest the allegations.”
In short, the very fact that Trump tweeted the call for her resignation right after Pulte’s “allegations” dropped itself shows how corrupted the process is here. As the ruling noted, Trump’s formal letter removing Cook followed only several days later—again without any warning or opportunity for Cook to defend herself.
“Trump’s public tweets very much complicate the administration’s effort to defend its actions,” Benjamin Klubes, a former acting general counsel at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and now a white-collar criminal defense attorney in D.C., told me. Klubes added that all this “demonstrates clearly the pretextual nature of the allegations against Ms. Cook,” and helps expose Pulte’s role in the scheme as “unusual and suspicious.”
Now, it’s unclear whether these facts about the timing—or the broader due process violation—will ultimately play a role if Cook does win. Perhaps it will merely be the failure to fire “for cause” that does it. Or maybe the Supreme Court will side with Trump in the end.
But it’s notable that the court went here for another reason. On one front after another, Trump has been manufacturing pretexts for his illegal actions with no constraint whatsoever. He’s invoked antisemitism to justify blocking billions in grants to Harvard, which everyone knows is nonsense. He’s used the Alien Enemies Act for deportations by absurdly claiming Venezuelan gang members constitute invasion by a hostile foreign nation. His tariffs rest on the knee-slapper that trade deficits pose an economic emergency.
This pileup of bogus rationales has thrust the lower courts into a critical role, as law professor Leah Litman recently detailed on our podcast. Again and again, they’ve engaged in painstaking fact finding to establish that those rationales are, to put it in technical terms, complete and utter horseshit. The ruling invalidating the deportations carefully constructed the facts on Tren de Aragua’s supposed “invasion.” The decision blocking Trump’s strong-arming of Harvard did something similar on the specious “antisemitism” rationale.
The problem, of course, is that the Supreme Court could undo much of this. Sherrilyn Ifill demonstrates that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the high court’s ruling allowing racial profiling in ICE arrests shows a stunning aversion to known facts about how arrests and detentions are playing out. The same might happen when the high court evaluates Trump’s pretexts for tariffs, the assault on Harvard, “alien enemy” deportations, and more, Litman argues: “This Supreme Court, like the Trump administration, has been all too willing to just ignore the facts.”
On the Cook affair, everyone knows exactly how the Trump-Pulte two-step works. Schiff’s lawyer, Preet Bharara, just released an extraordinary letter laying out detailed reasons why Pulte’s manipulations are corrupt and possibly illegal. Even some Republicans are fed up with Pulte. He’s running a big scam for Trump, and the whole sordid story is told in none other than Trump’s own tweet.
