Federal Reserve Governor Lisa 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.”
The statement from Cook came after the head of President Donald Trump‘s housing regulatory agency said Cook should resign or be fired for cause over what he claimed was evidence of “mortgage fraud” by the central bank official.
“To be honest, I think she needs to resign quickly,” Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said of Cook on CNBC’s “Money Movers.”
“I think she will have to resign, or I think she will be fired,” he said.
The remarks came hours after Trump, reacting to a letter Pulte sent to the Department of Justice asking it to criminally investigate Cook, wrote in a social media post that the governor “must resign, now!!!“
In response to Pulte’s tweet, Cook said she has no plans to step down.
“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,” said Cook 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.
Pulte’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi is the latest example of the Trump administration airing allegations of mortgage-related wrongdoing against the president’s opponents. The Justice Department is investigating Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James on similar grounds.
It also shows Trump expanding his efforts to push the Fed to slash interest rates, a pressure campaign that so far has mostly focused on central bank chairman Jerome Powell.
Cook, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden in 2022, voted with the majority on the Federal Open Market Committee to keep rates unchanged after the group’s latest meeting last month.
The DOJ declined CNBC’s request for comment on Pulte’s claims and Trump’s reaction.
Pulte’s central allegation is that Cook claimed two different properties as her primary residence at the same time.
“You cannot do that in America,” he said on CNBC.
The agency chief, who has aggressively backed Trump’s frequent attacks on the Fed and Powell, insisted that his actions were apolitical.
“There’s no funny business here,” Pulte said. “This is straightforward stuff, and if you commit mortgage fraud, especially in black and white, you will be prosecuted.”
But he tore into Cook at length on social media earlier Wednesday morning.
“Lisa Cooked is cooked,” he wrote in one post.
In another, Pulte wrote that he believes Trump “has cause to fire” the Fed governor.
Central bank governors under the law can only be removed for “cause,” which is generally understood to mean serious misconduct.
Pulte repeated on CNBC that “of course” there was cause to fire Cook — though he appeared to suggest that Powell, not Trump, could be the one to do it.
“I’ll tell you this, Jay Powell, he has a chance to do the right thing by the law. I mean, this is just, you know, this is common sense, what he needs to do here,” Pulte said.
But the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 states explicitly that board members can only be removed by the president.
Moreover, the Supreme Court suggested earlier this year that the president does not have the authority to arbitrarily remove Fed governors over policy disagreements.
Pulte’s letter, dated Friday, alleges that mortgage documents obtained by FHFA appear to show Cook “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, potentially committing mortgage fraud.”
He accused Cook of “falsifying residence statuses” for a residence in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a property in Atlanta, Georgia, “in order to potentially secure lower interest rates and more favorable loan terms.”
For both properties, Cook “appears to have acquired mortgages that do not meet certain lending requirements and could have received favorable loan terms under fraudulent circumstances,” Pulte alleged.
Pulte in his social-media spree Wednesday morning also wielded his claims about Cook against Powell.
“I hear Jay Powell is scrambling this morning. He can scramble all he wants, but he might as well be scrambling eggs, because the party at the Fed is OVER!” he wrote in one post.
He claimed in another post, “Powell must look into it or he is complicit.”
