Is a Fed board member still a member when the Orange Blog declares otherwise? Via the Independent:

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said that she will not resign after Donald Trump vowed to remove her from the role “immediately”.

In a letter to Cook posted to social media by the White House on Monday evening, Trump claimed there is “sufficient reason” to believe that the policymaker “made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements.”

Trump touted his powers under the Constitution and U.S. law to justify the unprecedented move for a president to dismiss a member of the central bank's leadership.

Here are the basic facts. She owned two separate homes, claiming each of them as primary residences during the same period.

“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” she said in a statement last week. “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.”

[...] Kathleen Engel, a mortgage finance and regulation expert at Suffolk University Law School, said a borrower who intentionally deceived lenders by falsely affirming a primary residence in order to receive a benefit like a lower interest rate could be charged with fraud. But she said Mr. Pulte’s agency had not produced much evidence to support that claim.

“Fraud has a lot of elements to it, including an intent requirement, and there’s nothing in what they have provided here that would form the basis of a fraud charge,” Ms. Engel said.

She also noted that Ms. Cook might not have collected income from the Atlanta rental during 2022 or 2023. “Just because you list a property for rent doesn’t mean that you were able to rent it and had income,” she said.

I leave you all to ponder the irony of Trump's concern about falsifying business records, like the 34 felony counts of which he was convicted.