Cable News Clips

Case in point: Trump’s appalling new effort to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. On Monday night his anger at Cook peaked as he announced that he’s removing Cook—who has infuriated him for months by helping to keep interest rates higher than he wants—essentially declaring Fed independence a dead letter.

Yet this maneuver may yet backfire on Trump—in part because the accomplices helping carry it out have grown almost absurdly brazen in doing so.

The move appears to be illegal, though Trump may still get away with it. The law allows a president to remove a Fed board member “for cause,” which has generally meant something like a real reason grounded in actual misconduct, not a fake reason that the president pulled out of his rear end.

But Trump’s letter firing Cook claims he can do this for cause “at my discretion,” meaning he gets to declare something “cause” by simply saying so, as The New York Times’s Charlie Savage notes. The courts will decide whether the executive power includes this nearly limitless authority, and while Supreme Court precedent here is complex, a win for Trump is not at all assured.

Enter Trump’s accomplices. The “cause” he cited is the charge that Cook committed mortgage fraud, a claim manufactured for him by William Pulte, a staunch Trump loyalist who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage markets. Pulte tweeted “findings” that Cook has fraudulently declared several principal or primary residences for mortgage purposes.......

Pulte is apparently manipulating agency processes for the express purpose of creating a pretext for referring matters involving Trump’s designated enemies to DOJ. As Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin points out, it’s probable that the only way the mortgages of three leading Trump foes could all face scrutiny is if Pulte personally ordered it. That’s an “abuse of office,” Levitin writes, and a “far greater offense” than anything Cook, Schiff, or James might have done.......

Democrats should be making it absolutely clear, right now, that anyone who carries out corrupt or illegal orders for Trump cannot count on bureaucratic obscurity to shield them from political or legal accountability later. Yes, Trump might preemptively pardon top officials who are legally vulnerable. But Democrats should pointedly pose the question: Do you really think it’s wise to count on Donald Trump to secure you from jeopardy later?