President Donald Trump said Friday he will fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she does not resign from her position.
“What she did was bad,” the president told reporters who asked about Cook, an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has come under fire from the Trump administration over allegations about her mortgages.
“So I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign,” he said during a surprise visit to The People’s House, a museum of the White House.
If Trump were to successfully remove Cook “for cause,” he would get the chance to reshape the central bank’s governing board, potentially for years to come.
U.S. President Donald Trump visits The People’s House: A White House Experience museum, in Washington D.C., U.S., August 22, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Two of the seven current governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, are Trump appointees. Both dissented from the Fed’s most recent decision to hold interest rates steady.
Another seat opened up earlier this summer, when Adriana Kugler announced she would step down.
If Trump is able to remove Cook, he would appoint her successor — potentially ensuring that a majority of the board shares his view on monetary policy. Board members serve 14-year terms.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte this week publicly accused Cook of mortgage fraud related to claims that she took two different properties as her primary residence at the same time.
He sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, which revealed Thursday that it will investigate Cook.
Pulte, a vocal critic of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell who has aggressively backed Trump’s calls for the central bank to lower interest rates, has continuously attacked Cook on social media since revealing his allegations.
Trump previously called for Cook to resign immediately in light of the allegations. Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who is widely seen as a loyalist to the president, urged Powell to promptly remove Cook — even though the central bank chief cannot do so under the law.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote in an X post Friday that Trump is targeting Cook because he is “trying to find a scapegoat for his failure to lower costs for Americans.”
Cook has consistently voted in line with Powell. She sided with the majority to keep rates unchanged following the Federal Open Market Committee’s most recent meeting last month.
Cook said Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”
“I learned from the media that FHFA Director William Pulte posted on social media that he was making a criminal referral based on a mortgage application from four years ago, before I joined the Federal Reserve,” Cook said in a statement.
“I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts,” she said.
Trump’s comments Friday morning came as Powell signaled that economic conditions “may warrant” interest rate cuts.
While the economy and labor market remain resilient, downside risks are rising and growth is declining — and Trump’s tariffs are once again raising inflation concerns, Powell said at the Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
