President Trump has opened a new front in his yearlong campaign to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — and this time he's built an entire tribunal to do it, with the verdict due just days after Americans vote in the midterms.

A presidential memorandum, dated October 7 and posted to the White House website on Friday, creates a three-member "committee of inquiry" tasked with determining whether there is "cause" to fire Cook over disputed mortgage paperwork. The panel — Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, and acting Office of Government Ethics director Keith Sonderling — will hold a closed, in-person hearing at the White House on November 5, two days after the midterm elections, according to NBC News and The Associated Press. Cook may submit a written statement beforehand, "shall appear" at the session, which can run up to four hours, and has until November 10 to file a post-hearing rebuttal before the committee sends Trump its recommendation.

Round two of a fight the Supreme Court already weighed in on

This is Trump's second attempt to oust Cook. He first moved to fire her in August 2025 over allegations — pushed by Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte — that she falsely listed two properties as primary residences on mortgage paperwork, something no sitting president had tried against a Fed governor in the central bank's history. Cook sued, and the Supreme Court ruled in June that a president cannot remove a Fed governor at will — removal requires a defined process, a stated cause and a genuine chance to respond. That ruling is the opening the White House is now using to try again.

Cook's attorneys, Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, say they have "grave doubts" the new process will be any fairer, pointing to Trump's repeated public statements that he has already decided to fire her.

If this process is anything close to objective, it will find that Governor Cook did not commit mortgage fraud, her lawyers said, adding that Cook "welcomes the opportunity to present the facts."

Cook, appointed by President Biden in 2022 and confirmed to a term running through 2038, has not been charged with any crime. Critics have flagged an apparent double standard: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Cabinet members Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Sean Duffy and Lee Zeldin have each listed more than one property as a "primary residence" on mortgage paperwork, per reporting cited by NBC News — with no comparable inquiry opened into any of them.

Democrats call the whole exercise rigged from the start. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, has publicly blasted the proceeding as illegitimate. Cook's allies argue the real target isn't a paperwork technicality at all — it's control of interest-rate policy, with Trump openly pushing the central bank toward deeper rate cuts. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has faced his own string of Trump broadsides, including over Fed building renovation costs that an internal watchdog later found no wrongdoing in.

For now, Cook keeps her seat and her vote on the Federal Open Market Committee. But with a hearing date locked in for two days after voters go to the polls, the fight over who controls America's central bank is about to collide, once again, with the fight over who controls Washington.