President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to give him permission to fire whomever he wants—as long as he can come up with a reason.
The Trump administration went running to the Supreme Court Thursday to back up its efforts to oust Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2-1 Monday along ideological lines to block Cook’s removal, saying that she was likely to succeed in her statutory claim that she’d been fired without “cause,” as well as her procedural claim that she did not receive her due process prior to her removal.
Trump’s attorney John D. Sauer submitted a request to stay the preliminary injunction Thursday, arguing that Cook was not entitled to due process, and that Trump has a sweeping discretion to fire whomever he wanted as long as he claimed it was related to their job.
“The Federal Reserve Act’s broad ‘for cause’ provision rules out removal for no reason at all, or for policy disagreement,” Sauer wrote. “But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination of ‘some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer’ is within the President’s unreviewable discretion,” Sauer wrote.
“The President’s strong concerns about the appearance of mortgage fraud, based on facially contradictory representations made to obtain mortgages by someone whose job is to set interest rates that affect Americans’ mortgages, satisfies any conception of cause,” Sauer continued.
(One might wonder if the same strong concerns would also apply to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also made contradictory mortgage pledges in his position to shape domestic and international economic policy.)
A federal district court had previously ruled that Trump couldn’t fire Cook over unproven allegations of mortgage claim fraud from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte—who’s made similar accusations against a number of the president’s enemies—because it had nothing to do with her actual job. “For cause” typically refers to serious misconduct, or a neglect of duty.
Since Trump hit the campaign trail, the Supreme Court has been located securely in the president’s pocket, granting him “immunity” and then greenlighting move after move of his sweeping agenda when he resumed office. Despite the rulings of lower courts, it’s entirely possible this trend will continue.
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