Trump is doing his darnedest to turn the U.S. into a banana republic.
Desperate to juice the economy he’s tanking, Donald Trump has been trying to bully the Federal Reserve into doing his bidding and lowering interest rates. After he was unable to push out chair Jerome Powell, and after his plan to fire Powell for cause flopped spectacularly, President P***y Grabber turned to Lisa Cook. By wild coincidence, I’m sure, she just happens to be the first Black woman on the board.
Via The New York Times (my emphases added):
The allegations against Ms. Cook came from Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has spent weeks fanning Mr. Trump’s ire against the central bank. Together, Mr. Pulte and Mr. Trump have drummed up a steady stream of accusations in a bid to install a set of political loyalists at the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Pulte had specifically accused Ms. Cook of committing mortgage fraud and called on her to resign. He also referred the case to the Justice Department, which opened a criminal investigation at his request, and urged Mr. Trump to fire Ms. Cook, which the president later said he would do if she did not resign.
On Monday, Mr. Trump followed through on that threat. “I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” he said in a letter posted to Truth Social.
Under the Federal Reserve Act, the law that charters the central bank, Mr. Trump may dismiss a governor only if he can demonstrate cause, typically defined as professional neglect or malfeasance. In recent days, legal experts have questioned whether the president could satisfy that burden, given the fact that the allegations against Ms. Cook have not been proved in court and involve personal matters.
The whole thing couldn’t reek more of corruption.
The Times called Cook’s firing “legally dubious” and stopped just one step short of calling Trump’s behavior a witch hunt.
While Mr. Pulte insisted that he sought only to combat fraud, he and Mr. Trump still appeared to target Ms. Cook with a clear political objective in mind.
…
By focusing on Ms. Cook’s mortgages, in particular, their tactics also fit an emerging pattern of political retribution. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pulte have trotted out similar allegations of fraud against the president’s perceived enemies, including Senator Adam B. Schiff of California, who as a Democratic representative led congressional inquiries into Mr. Trump during his first term, and Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, who won a civil fraud trial against Mr. Trump before he returned to office.
Even worse than all that, there are serious financial implications for a lazy, ignorant wannabe-dictator to take over what is supposed to be an apolitical, independent board governing U.S. monetary policy.
Cook has previously said, “I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”
Please stand strong, Ms. Cook!
