In firing Lisa Cook from her position on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on the grounds that she allegedly filed false documents in taking out a personal mortgage, Donald Trump is on surprisingly unsettled legal turf.
Now, as Andy McCarthy has discussed in greater detail, it’s important to note what is not happening here. The big ongoing fight over the president’s power to remove executive-branch officials is on the constitutional question of whether Congress, by statute, can insulate executive officials (such as the leadership of “independent” agencies) from being fired at will by the president. The Supreme Court, since Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), has allowed Congress to limit the president’s removal power and thus effectively create a fourth branch of government. The current Court has signaled, in a series of emergency orders overturning district court injunctions against Trump’s firing people, that it intends to overturn Humphrey’s Executor — except as it applies to the Fed.
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