Sunday’s filing is the latest step in an unprecedented effort by the White House to shape the historically independent Fed. Cook’s firing marks the first time in the central bank’s 112-year history that a president has tried to fire a governor.
“The public and the executive share an interest in ensuring the integrity of the Federal Reserve,” Trump’s lawyers argued in Sunday’s filing. “And that requires respecting the president’s statutory authority to remove governors ‘for cause’ when such cause arises.”