Every living former Federal Reserve chair and a roster of the nation’s leading economic officials filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday urging justices to block former President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook.
The bipartisan group, led by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, warned that allowing Cook’s removal while litigation continues would “threaten that independence and erode public confidence in the Fed.”
Other signatories include former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Jack Lew and Timothy Geithner, as well as former Fed Governor Dan Tarullo and dozens of prominent economists who have served Democratic and Republican administrations.
“The independence of the Federal Reserve, within the limited authority granted by Congress to achieve the goals Congress itself has set, is a critical feature of our national monetary system,” the officials wrote. Undermining that independence, they said, could cause “substantial long-term harm and inferior economic performance overall.”
The court is weighing whether Trump has the authority to dismiss Cook, who has been targeted by the White House as part of a broader campaign to pressure the Fed into more aggressive interest rate cuts. Trump is the first U.S. president to attempt the removal of a sitting Fed official.
Cook’s ouster was announced after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a close Trump ally, accused her of mortgage fraud in August. Cook has denied the allegations, has not been charged with a crime, and documents reviewed by NBC News in September appeared to contradict Pulte’s claims.
Two lower courts have blocked her removal. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court last week, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer arguing a judge’s ruling constituted “improper judicial interference.”
In a filing Thursday, Cook’s lawyers told the justices she committed neither fraud nor negligence, and urged them to deny Trump’s request to remove her while the case is pending. The White House has insisted Cook was “lawfully removed for cause.”
The brief filed by the former Fed leaders also highlighted the risks of political interference, citing President Richard Nixon’s pressure on then-Fed Chair Arthur Burns in the 1970s to cut interest rates ahead of an election. That decision, the economists wrote, “enabled a decade of high and volatile inflation” and a deep recession that took years to control.
“There is broad consensus among economists, based on decades of macroeconomic research, that a more independent central bank will lead to lower and more stable inflation without creating higher unemployment,” the officials said. “Although lowering rates may temporarily satisfy voters, it can instead lead to persistently higher inflation and ultimately harm the national economy.”
