The White House has pushed its hearing into the mortgage-fraud allegations against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook back to December, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on Thursday — moving a showdown that had been set for November 5 and keeping Cook in her seat, and voting, while the fight over her future runs on.
The hearing is the centrepiece of the process President Trump set up on October 7, when a presidential memorandum created a three-member committee of inquiry — Hassett, Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Rich — to examine the claim that Cook made false statements in connection with mortgages on two properties. The committee will hear her answer in person at the White House and then recommend to the president whether there is "cause" to remove her.
"The president has asked a small set of his people to run a completely fair process that puts all the information on the table, and then the president will decide next steps," Hassett said in a television interview. "We in the White House, the White House counsel, has worked very closely with Governor Cook's people. I think that they've agreed to a date in December to meet together and talk these things through." He described the committee as "people of honor who are charged with looking at the evidence and correctly characterizing it in a way that people will be able to observe and criticize if they like."
Cook's side has not confirmed that any December date has been agreed. Her lawyer, Abbe Lowell, had already told the White House she could not attend on November 5 — she will be carrying out her official duties at financial and monetary policy meetings in Europe — and that she could not appear until after the Federal Reserve's December 8–9 policy-setting meeting. On Friday, a spokeswoman for her lawyer declined to confirm the new date Hassett described.
Lowell has also challenged the panel itself, writing to White House counsel Will Scharf: "We have significant concerns regarding the objectivity and fitness of the committee for its assigned purpose." He pointed to "demonstrably biased members" — Hassett has already said publicly that the president has "cause" to fire Cook — and to unspecified additional allegations the White House has not yet laid out. The White House answers that the process exceeds what the law demands. "The President is going beyond what the Supreme Court required by offering Lisa Cook an in-person hearing that will be conducted in a fair and open process," spokesman Matthew Middleton said.
The hearing exists because the Supreme Court ordered this road, and no other. In August 2025, President Trump moved to fire Cook — the first governor removed in the Federal Reserve's 111-year history — after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte accused her of claiming two properties as primary residences on mortgage applications filed in 2021, before she joined the Fed. Cook sued, a federal judge blocked the removal, and on June 29 the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Trump v. Cook that a Fed governor can be removed only "for cause" and only after notice and a fair chance to respond — process Cook never got last year. The Court did not decide whether the mortgage claims amount to cause. "We have not addressed the facts, as they have yet to be found or analyzed under the relevant legal standards," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Cook, who denies any wrongdoing and says the accusations are a pretext in the president's campaign for lower interest rates, remains a working governor while the process plays out: this week she dissented from the Fed's decision to leave rates steady, preferring another rate hike to curb inflation. The delay means she will also vote at the December 8–9 meeting, with the committee's hearing now set to follow it. For American households, the stakes sit inside that calendar: the seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board vote on the interest rate that flows into every mortgage, car loan and credit card in the country, and the December fight will decide whether one of those seven keeps her seat — and on what evidence a president may take it away.
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