I’m virtually certain — which is something different from entirely certain, and I’ll be glad to be wrong — that the Trump administration will succeed in firing Lisa Cook from the Fed Board.

Cook might’ve committed mortgage fraud, FHFA chief Bill Pulte reckons. Or maybe not, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. And even if she did make incorrect statements about her intentions to reside at a second property, Scott Bessent might’ve too, according to Bloomberg. Maybe Pulte’s relatives made improper claims, another report suggested.

And guess what? An estimated 22,300 Americans were administratively derelict in their mortgage pledges from 2005 to 2017, Fed research shows. That sure is a lot of “fraud.” Mortgage criminals, like aliens, walk among us. You can barely turn around without stepping on the toes of a white collar crook.

Unfortunately, all the Whataboutism in the world won’t likely save Cook in the eyes of John Roberts, who the Trump administration called upon Thursday to stay the D.C. Circuit Court injunction which allowed Cook to vote on monetary policy this week. Nor will Roberts likely take account of the administration’s rather transparent motives when deciding whether to let Cook’s firing stand.

In the emergency request to the Court (embedded in full below), John Sauer argues that Trump didn’t deny Cook due process (a key point of contention) and is likely to prevail on the merits because mortgage fraud (proven or not) surely counts as “cause” to remove a Fed governor.

“The lower courts’ due-process theory would invite judicial micromanagement of the President’s exercise of his core Article II powers — even where, as here, courts have no authority to review the substance of the President’s ultimate decision,” Sauer declared. “Regardless, due process is a flexible concept,” he went on, noting that Trump “notified Cook of the charges against her and waited five days for her to respond before removing her.”

Sauer was very adamant about Cook having failed to “dispute any material fact” or “offer any plausible justification for her conduct.” With the caveat that I’m no attorney, one potential problem is that if you’re not formally charged with a crime, it isn’t necessarily obvious that you’re compelled to “respond.”

Sauer went on to contend that it’s precisely because the Fed “plays a uniquely important role in the American economy” that Cook’s position is untenable. “Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself — and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” he insisted.

I’ve been over this half a dozen times already, and I don’t to recapitulate unnecessarily, but I’d derelict (and badly so) not to note that Sauer repeatedly cites Wilcox. Wilcox was the shadow docket case in which the Court introduced the already infamous “Fed carveout” which ostensibly shields the Board from precisely what the administration’s trying to do in firing Cook.

Sauer would say that’s not accurate — that Cook has only her own behavior to blame. Maybe that’s true. Seriously. I’d grant him that. But the fact is, he’s citing a case which addressed Trump’s capacity to dismiss independent agency officers without cause. Here’s what the Court said in May about the Fed while allowing those removals to stand:

[R]espondents Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris contend that arguments in this case necessarily implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee. We disagree. The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks.

So, Wilcox protected the Fed Board. Or purported to. Now it’s being cited in a petition to fire a Fed Board governor less than four months later. Such are the perils of appeasement.

Or maybe not. Maybe this isn’t a “peril” at all, but rather the intended result. Because as I suggested in the linked article, it’s possible the conservative majority’s awkward Fed exception was actually an invitation for the administration to challenge the flimsy logic. If that’s the case (if it was an invitation), Cook’s ouster was Trump RSVPing.

Remember: Elena Kagan called bullsh-t on this in May writing, in a dissent,

In valuing so highly — in an emergency posture — the President’s ability to fire without cause Wilcox and Harris and everyone like them, the majority all but declares Humphrey’s itself the emergency. Except apparently for the Federal Reserve. The majority closes today’s order by stating, out of the blue, that it has no bearing on “the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections” for members of the Federal Reserve Board or Open Market Committee. I am glad to hear it, and do not doubt the majority’s intention to avoid imperiling the Fed. But then, today’s order poses a puzzle. For the Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on.

If you picked up on the sarcasm there, that’s good: Because Kagan was laying it on pretty thick. She knew this day was coming, and soon. Now it’s upon us with the caveat that Trump’s ginned up “cause.” Or what he says is cause, and that may be all Roberts needs.

At the risk of venturing over the ad nauseam line — and that’s a risk worth taking here considering the stakes — if the Court stays the injunction which allowed Cook to vote on policy this week, the conservative majority will have de facto (kinda, sorta, again with the “cause” proviso) overturned their own Fed carveout just four months after it was established.

Arguably, such a decision would — or at least could, on some interpretations — open the door to Trump firing Powell or even the entire Board sans Stephen Miran, Chris Waller and Miki Bowman assuming (not safely) that the latter two are still in Trump’s good graces after failing to join Miran’s dissent in favor of a larger rate cut this week.

Of course, Trump wouldn’t go there, because the market fallout would be swift and harrowing. But then, as we re-learned in April, Trump’s not one to shy away just because the market might look askance at his judgment.

Trump V. Cook