Trump Establishes Committee to Investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
A President May Not Be Judge in His Own Monetary Cause
When the power to police a governor’s mortgage becomes a weapon to command her votes, the trust on which government stands is already being spent.
I begin with the plain scene. The president of the United States has announced a committee seated at the White House to investigate a governor of the central bank over allegations that she misrepresented two properties on a mortgage application before she held that office. This is not the first attempt to remove her; an earlier effort in 2025 was stopped by a court, and later by the Supreme Court in 2026. The same president has since declared he will appoint only those to that bank who agree with him on cutting interest rates. When personal accusation travels in harness with declared policy demands, a prudent people ought to examine the harness very closely.
In my *Second Treatise of Government* I described political power as a right to make and enforce laws only for the public good, and always under rules that could have been consented to by free and equal men. That description is not a flourish; it is a measure. Here, the professed ground is mortgage fraud, a serious charge in any commonwealth, for falsehood in contracts cuts at property in the broad sense—men’s lives, liberties, and estates. Yet the reports themselves call these claims unsubstantiated and note that litigation on the matter is still ongoing. If the facts be doubtful, the more exact must be the separation between the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of power.
The president has set up a three‑member committee to receive her written statement, take argument and written evidence in a hearing of no more than four hours, and then advise him whether there is adequate cause under federal law to remove her. She is given twenty‑one days to respond and may submit witness statements. On paper this has the face of legal form. But the law of liberty is not satisfied by form alone. First, those who accuse must bear the burden of proof; an officer, once duly seated, does not hold by the precarious tenure of pleasing her superiors in every controversy. Secondly, the tribunal must be so framed that those who stand to gain by her removal are not judges in their own case.
Here is the difficulty. The same hand that publicly announced it would only appoint central bankers who agree with a particular course—cutting interest rates—is the hand that receives the committee’s recommendation and executes removal. The independence of such a bank is not an idle contrivance. When I warned in the *Second Treatise* that absolute arbitrary power is worse than the state of nature it pretends to cure, I had in view every device by which those who command the sword might also command the value of every man’s wages and savings. If an officer may be dismissed upon convenient accusations whenever she resists the ruler’s preferred rate, then the standing rule of the institution is silently replaced by the will of a single man.
It will be said, and with some colour of reason, that integrity in financial officers is of the highest importance, and that a president who ignored credible fraud would betray his trust. I grant it. No man is above the law, whether he sits in a palace or at a central bank. Yet as I argued in my *Essay Concerning Human Understanding*, assent ought to be proportioned to the evidence; to believe, and much more to punish, upon proofs not yet made good, is to fail in one’s duty of reason. The notice here speaks of unsubstantiated claims. Until those who allege can produce clear proofs, any proceeding that conveniently advances a standing policy desire must be watched as closely as the accused.
There is, in this story, one encouraging sign. An earlier attempt to remove this same governor was checked by a court and finally blocked by the Supreme Court. Whatever the detail of their reasons, the very existence of such a check answers to the demand, which runs through my political writings, for an impartial judge standing between the people and those who govern them. When the judiciary can tell a president, “You have not shown lawful cause,” power is recalled to the trust on which it was given. That is not disorder; it is the ordinary physic of a constitutional body correcting its own excess humours.
The matter is not yet resolved; evidence may emerge, the committee may proceed uprightly, or it may not. But the principles are already clear. A president may seek honest inquiry into alleged fraud, yet he may not use that inquiry as cover to bend an independent institution to his settled will on interest rates. If the process becomes a mere instrument to secure policy obedience, it is usurpation, not government; the title of law will be serving the thing itself, which is force. When those entrusted with the people’s property treat every safeguard as an obstacle to be worked around, a long train of abuses has already begun its march, and free men must remember that power was theirs before it was lent.
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — Political power defined narrowly as the right to make laws, with penalties, only for the public good — anything beyond that definition must justify itself or stand condemned.
- Second Treatise of Government — Absolute arbitrary power is worse than the state of nature it claims to cure; judge any concentration of discretion by whether it leaves those subject to it a known standing law and an impartial judge.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — Assent must be proportioned to the evidence; believing beyond one's proofs is a failure of duty, not a mark of faith.