President Donald Trump said Friday that he would fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she doesn’t resign over mortgage fraud allegations. 

Cook, appointed to the Federal Reserve by former President Joe Biden, has faced pressure from the Trump administration to step down after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte — an ally of Trump — urged the Justice Department to investigate alleged mortgage-residence misrepresentations by Cook. 

“I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign,” Trump told reporters on Friday morning. “What she did was bad so I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign.”

Trump first called for Cook to step down on Wednesday, shortly after Pulte publicized an August 15 letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi alleging that Cook falsified documents to get better loans and interest rates. 

Pulte alleged that Cook simultaneously claimed primary residency for two homes—one in Michigan and one in Georgia — in order to secure more favorable mortgage rates. He wrote in his letter that Cook “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, potentially committing mortgage fraud under the criminal statute.”

In a statement, Cook said that she learned of the criminal referral through the media and that she had no plans to leave her position at the Fed. 

“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” she said. “I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.”

End of Summer Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships

Trump has repeatedly clashed with the Fed over its reluctance to lower interest rates and has previously floated firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Cook, who is slated to stay at the Fed until 2038, has backed Powell’s decision to hold interest rates steady.

Last year, The Daily Wire and City Journal conducted an investigation into Cook’s academic record and found that, in several papers, she had lifted language from other scholars without proper quotations, and repeatedly republished text from her own prior work — or that of coauthors — across multiple academic journals without adequate attribution.

For example, in a 2021 paper titled “The Antebellum Roots of Distinctively Black Names,” Cook copied and pasted verbatim language from Charles Calomiris and Jonathan Pritchett, without using quotation marks when describing their findings, as required.

Much of Cook’s academic work also focused on race activism rather than quantitative economics.

President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on U.S. imports from foreign countries could reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimated on Friday.

If Trump’s global tariff hikes continue, increased revenue could shrink primary deficits by $3.3 trillion and cut federal interest payments by $0.7 trillion over the next decade, CBO, Congress’ nonpartisan analyst, said.

The current top tariff rates may not hold as negotiations with trading partners and international legal challenges are ongoing.

But the additional tariff revenue could help offset the deficit increases triggered by the Republicans’ tax-cut and spending bill passed this year. CBO estimated this would widen the deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade.

The U.S. federal debt is $37.18 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. It has continued to grow under Republican and Democratic administrations as the U.S. Congress continues to authorize the federal government to spend more money than it takes in.

Lawmakers face a government funding deadline at the end of September or risk a shutdown if spending bills are not passed.

The latest CBO estimate marks an increase from June, when it forecast a $2.5 trillion reduction in primary deficits and a $500 billion cut in interest outlays.

U.S. tariff rates across countries and products averaged 16.7% in August, up from 15.1% in June, according to Oxford Economics. More than $26 billion in duties have been assessed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this fiscal year, far surpassing the hundreds of millions recorded in the previous year, according to the analysis.

(Reporting by Bo Erickson; editing by Scott Malone and Clelia Oziel)