President Trump Later is holding a rally in upstate New York after focusing his crunch-time campaign blitz for GOP candidates in red states. He's speaking in Syracuse, N.Y., to give a last-minute boost to Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman — whom nonpartisan election forecaster Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) gave a 10 percent…
Page F119From§Eachthe evening edition — 14 October 2026
Trump empanels a committee to fire a Fed governor the Supreme Court already said he couldn't fire.
As it ran on the front
On October 2, the Justice Department told Bloomberg News it would not reopen the investigation into Jerome Powell, the former Federal Reserve chair, over cost overruns tied to the central bank's building renovation project. Attorney General Todd Blanche said he had not ruled out continuing to look, which is the same sentence building inspectors use when they close a file and keep the folder. The money attached to that file was real: a renovation, a budget, an overrun large enough that the department had opened a criminal inquiry into it in the first place. It is now closed.
One week later, on October 9, the president opened a different kind of file. He announced a committee to investigate Lisa Cook, a sitting Fed governor, over allegations of mortgage fraud — this after the Supreme Court had already ruled, in June, that his first attempt to fire her was unconstitutional. The new committee does not report to a court. It reports to the White House, which will consult with Justice Department officials on what to do with what it finds. A hearing is set for November 5, at the White House, which Cook "shall" attend, in the committee's own word for it.…
…(cont) This is not Cook's first filing on the question. On August 27, her lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, said the administration had "no legal basis" to remove her, pointing to the ruling already on the books. It produced a second committee for her.
On October 14, a lawyer for Cook denounced the new panel directly, raising what the filing's language calls "significant concerns" over its "objectivity and fitness" to decide her seat on the board that sets the nation's interest rates. That is the board Powell used to chair. He kept his seat through the overrun. She is being asked to defend her seat through a mortgage allegation, before a panel the White House built and will consult with itself about.
Reconcile the two files side by side and the gap has a shape: one Fed official's cost overrun closes without a hearing; another Fed official's mortgage gets a hearing she is ordered to attend. The interest rate the board sets touches every mortgage in the country, including, as it happens, hers. Whose column that gap shows up in is not a mystery, hon.
“They won't reopen the file on the guy with a real budget overrun, but they stood up a whole committee for the one person on the board the Supreme Court already said you can't fire. That's not oversight, that's finding a new door after the old one got nailed shut. And the board she sits on is the one that decides what your mortgage costs next year.”
“This is just due diligence — any mortgage allegation deserves a committee, full stop. The timing, right after the Supreme Court blocked the firing, is purely coincidental; we just happened to stand up the panel immediately after. Did I say "immediately after"? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
US president renews his efforts to oust Cook despite supreme court ruling that her firing was unconstitutional Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is establishing a committee to investigate Lisa Cook, the US Federal Reserve governor, over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud, renewing his efforts to oust her despite a June…
A lawyer for Lisa Cook raised “significant concerns” over the “objectivity and fitness of the committee” assembled by President Trump as a way to remove her as a governor at the Federal Reserve.
President Donald Trump has formed a committee to investigate Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud, an escalation after his previous effort to fire Cook was blocked by the Supreme Court. A White House memo said the group will look into whether Cook made “false statements in connection with one or more mortgage […]
· Cook argues Trump administration has no legal basis to remove her from Federal Reserve board from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
· DoJ declines to reopen investigation into former Fed chair Jay Powell from the morgue, 2 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.