The White House has redoubled its efforts to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board, sending the central banker a letter this week providing formal notice of its intentions.

“You are hereby provided notice that the President is considering removing you from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve due to there being sufficient reason to believe that you made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements,” reads the letter signed by Dan Scavino, the White House’s deputy chief of staff. The letter gave Cook a 21-day deadline to respond to the allegations.

The extraordinary step follows a Supreme Court decision in June that blocked President Donald Trump from firing Cook but opened a potential alternative legal pathway for her removal.

“Only after Cook has had the opportunity to respond to the charges made against her may a final decision be made,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “And only then can the courts assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges.”

That 5-4 interim ruling rejected a Trump administration request to overturn previous U.S. district court and federal appeals court rulings that allowed Cook to remain in her job while the case involving alleged mortgage fraud proceeds.

Cook, whose term on the Fed’s board runs through 2038, has repeatedly denied the accusations. In a statement provided to Scotsman Guide on Friday, her attorneys positioned the latest move by the White House as an attempt to “interfere with the independence of the Federal Reserve,” calling the allegations “as baseless now as they were a year ago.”

“No matter what President Trump tries to do next, this much is clear under the facts and Supreme Court precedent — there is no valid cause for removing Governor Cook,” stated attorneys Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen. “As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed.”

Trump first attempted to fire Cook in August 2025 in a letter posted to his Truth Social account. It came 10 days after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte referred Cook to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation.

In Pulte’s letter, which the housing regulator shared on his personal social media account but has since removed, he alleged that Cook had committed mortgage fraud by claiming two homes as her primary residence to potentially obtain more favorable mortgage rates.

Neither the lower courts nor the Supreme Court have ruled on those claims. During oral arguments in January, Supreme Court justices focused on whether the allegations against Cook constituted sufficient justification for removal by the president.

Under the terms of the Federal Reserve Act, Fed officials can only be removed “for cause,” which many legal scholars interpret as meaning gross negligence or dereliction of duty while in office. Though the June decision allowed Cook to remain on the central bank’s board for now, Roberts’ majority opinion stopped short of spelling out “for cause” parameters.

In the letter sent to Cook this week, the White House claims that the unproven allegations of mortgage fraud “appears to demonstrate a level of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.”

“Because the allegations in the Criminal Referral reflect on your honesty, trustworthiness, and competence to perform the duties of the office you currently hold, the President has determined that there is reason to believe they constitute cause to remove you from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve,” the letter stated.

Cook’s legal counsel has argued that she is being targeted as part of a broader attack by the president against the Federal Reserve’s independence. They view it as a pattern of actions by Trump that included repeated verbal attacks throughout 2025 against then-Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s reluctance to lower interest rates.

In January, the Department of Justice issued subpoenas to Powell and the Fed, which posed the threat of a criminal indictment over Senate Banking Committee testimony given by Powell in June of 2025 regarding a renovation of the Fed’s historic headquarters.

The subpoenas were subsequently quashed by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who wrote in his decision that “there is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will.”

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee, succeeded Powell as Fed chair in May. In a move that has limited historical precedent, Powell chose to remain on the Fed’s board after his chairmanship term ended, which denied Trump the opportunity to nominate a replacement.

Cook, who has served on the Fed’s board and its rate-setting committee since 2022, has never dissented against the majority on an interest rate decision. Though generally seen as one of the more dovish members of the committee, meaning a hesitancy to hike interest rates to fight inflation, she recently signaled that she is “prepared to act by raising rates, if necessary.”