A court hearing on Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook’s request that President Donald Trump be barred from firing her while a lawsuit plays out ended Friday without a judge issuing a ruling.
Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, blasted the Department of Justice’s argument at the hearing that Trump had the necessary legal cause to remove Cook because of suggestions by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that she committed mortgage fraud in documents for two properties in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Michigan, before joining the Fed.
“You can’t have Director Pulte’s crazy midnight tweets be the cause,” Lowell told Judge Jia Cobb in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
But a DOJ lawyer told Cobb that it is up to Trump’s “discretion” to determine if he has legal cause to fire a Fed governor.
The Fed, in a court filing before the hearing, said it would not make arguments on the merits of Cook’s request. But the central bank also asked Cobb to issue a “prompt ruling” on her motion.
Cobb ended the hearing after two hours of arguments without ruling on Cook’s request for a temporary restraining order that would block her removal from the Senate-confirmed seat.
It is not clear when the judge will rule.
Cobb suggested that the attorneys for both sides confer and determine whether they want her to first rule on the restraining order, or whether they want her to issue a decision on potential requests for a preliminary injunction or summary judgment to restrict Trump from booting her from the Fed and replacing her.
Cobb also said she was giving the parties more time to supplement in writing the arguments they made in open court on Friday.
Attorney Abbe Lowell, representing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, arrives at federal court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.
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Lowell began that session by asking Cobb to keep in place the “status quo” — Cook remaining in her job — while he, Trump’s lawyer, and other interested parties lay out arguments in court filings on whether the president has the power to terminate her.
Cobb said, “This case obviously raises some important questions that may be of first impression, particularly as it applies to this board.”
If Trump succeeds in firing Cook, he would be on track to have nominated a majority of the seven-member Board, which sets interest rates. Trump has criticized the Board for months for not cutting those rates, which he has argued would boost the U.S. economy and reduce the federal government’s cost of financing its debt.
The Elijah Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.
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Cook, who is the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, argues that Trump has no such cause for firing her. She was nominated to the Board by then-President Joe Biden in 2022, and her current 14-year term is due to expire in January 2038.
Trump says he wants to fire Cook because of Pulte’s prior allegations that she potentially committed mortgage fraud in statements she made on documents related to the properties in Atlanta and Ann Arbor.
On Thursday night, Pulte said he had filed a second criminal referral against Cook with the Department of Justice related to a mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and alleged misrepresentations she made about that condo and the two other homes in government ethics filings during her time as a Fed governor.
Lowell on Friday called Pulte’s new referral “an obvious smear campaign aimed at discrediting Gov. Cook by a political operative who has taken to social media more than 30 times in the last two days and demanded her removal before any review of the facts or evidence.”
“Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board,” Lowell said.
Attorney Norman Eisen, representing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, arrives at federal court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cook sued Trump, the Fed Board of Governors, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday. The suit says that Trump’s firing of her is illegal, and asks Cobb for an order keeping her on the job while the case is litigated.
Powell and the Fed Board were sued only to the extent that they could, at some point, seek to execute Trump’s desire to fire her.
The Fed, in its court filing Friday, told Cobb that it intends ” to follow any order this Court issues.”
The Supreme Court is likely to end up resolving the dispute.
