A Hearing Whose Verdict Seems Already Decided Will Not Protect the Fed

President Trump has found a new way to try to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. In a memorandum made public Friday, he created a three-member committee of his own appointees to decide whether allegations that Cook misstated facts on mortgage documents, before she joined the Fed, give him cause to fire her. The panel will hold a hearing on November 5, two days after the midterm elections, behind closed doors at the White House, according to CBS News.

On paper, this is a response to the Supreme Court. In June, the justices ruled 5-4, CBS News reported, that Mr. Trump had failed to give Cook notice and a chance to answer the charges before he tried to fire her last year. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, according to the same report, that the process need not be elaborate; written materials and a brief opportunity to respond could suffice. The new committee checks those boxes. Cook may submit a statement and evidence and appear in person, and CBS News reported that the proceedings will be transcribed.

But process is only meaningful if the outcome is genuinely open. According to CNN, the committee’s members are Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council and one of the president’s most loyal economic defenders; Keith Sonderling, acting head of the Office of Government Ethics; and Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Department of Justice lawyers may conduct the questioning, CBS News reported. Cook’s lawyers, in a statement reported by CBS News, note that the president has repeatedly said he has already decided to fire her, and they have grave doubts the hearing will be legitimate. A former San Francisco Fed official told CNN that, given the panel’s makeup, the result seems clear.

The allegations deserve to be taken seriously, as any allegation of dishonesty by a public official should. The president’s defenders make a fair point: the law allows removal of a Fed governor for cause, and if Cook lied on a mortgage application, that would bear on her fitness. Cook denies committing any fraud, her lawyers say the claims rest on clerical errors, and no court has found otherwise.

What makes this case matter far beyond one governor is its context. Mr. Trump has spent more than a year attacking the Fed for not cutting interest rates as fast as he wants, including a Justice Department investigation of former Chair Jerome Powell that, the Guardian reported, was dropped in April. Last month the Fed raised rates for the first time in three years to fight inflation driven in part by the Iran war, with every voting member, including Mr. Trump’s own choice for chair, Kevin Warsh, in favor, according to CNN. The president has since complained about a political Board of Governors, CNN reported. An analyst at Raymond James told CNN that Powell and Governor Michael Barr are also on a list for potential removal.

Central bank independence is not an abstraction. It is the reason markets trust that interest rates are set to protect the value of the dollar and the jobs and savings of ordinary families rather than the electoral calendar of whoever holds the White House. Countries that have let leaders bend their central banks to political will have paid for it in inflation, and it is working families who pay the most.

If the evidence against Cook is strong, it should be presented to a neutral decision-maker in public, with the transcript released in full. The Senate Banking Committee should hold its own hearing on the administration’s campaign against the Fed. And the courts, when this case returns to them, should look hard at whether cause means real misconduct or merely an inconvenient vote.