On Monday evening, President Donald Trump attempted to fire a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook. A Trump official has claimed that she had committed mortgage fraud before she joined the powerful body that sets national interest rates.
The real story seems to be that she dares to disagree with the president. As a member of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, Cook has consistently voted with Chairman Jerome Powell to maintain current interest rates, much to the president’s annoyance. The effort to oust Cook would appear to be an escalation of Trump’s effort to force the Fed to lower rates.
It’s also part of a pattern.
In the last two months, the Trump administration has repeatedly used threats of prosecution and federal investigation to target the president’s political enemies. Last Friday, the FBI raided the home of Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, John Bolton, apparently on grounds that relate to Bolton’s 2020 memoir allegedly disclosing government secrets. Bolton has not made any direct comment on the raid other than a post Tuesday on X. “Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy today is no more coherent than it was last Friday when his administration executed search warrants against my home and office,” he wrote.
