FILE – Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook listens during an open meeting of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, June 25, 2025, in Washington.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Lisa Cook sought a temporary restraining order to block President Donald Trump’s attempt to oust her.
In a new filing, Cook’s attorneys deny that the Fed board member committed mortgage fraud.
The alleged inconsistencies in Cook’s records were already disclosed during vetting, lawyers said.
In a Tuesday filing, Cook’s attorneys submitted additional arguments in support of a request for a temporary restraining order that would block President Donald Trump‘s attempt to oust a key member of the Federal Reserve.
The attorneys said in the 31-page filing that Cook didn’t receive proper due process, including an opportunity to address the allegations made against her, and the justification for her firing wouldn’t rise to the level of “for cause” removal.
“Setting aside the fact that Governor Cook did not ever commit mortgage fraud, any such pre-office offense plainly would not have been ‘so infamous a nature, as to render the offender unfit to execute any public franchise,'” the attorneys wrote.
A White House spokesperson and attorneys for Cook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On August 20, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, published a letter on X that accused Cook of falsifying bank documents and property records to secure a “more favorable” mortgage. In particular, Pulte says Cook improperly designated which of her homes served as a primary and secondary place of residence while filing paperwork for a home loan application.
Cook’s attorneys said in the Tuesday filing that Trump then called for Cook’s removal on his Truth Social account half an hour after Pulte’s social media post.
“Governor Cook learned of these developments only through the grapevine — no government official gave her notice of these Truth Social posts,” the attorneys said.
Cook’s attorneys called the claims “alleged facial inconsistencies” that were already disclosed to the government during the vetting and confirmation process. Cook was nominated by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2022.
Those alleged inconsistencies, attorneys wrote, do not rise to the level of “for cause,” citing Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 landmark Supreme Court case that established how a sitting US president cannot fire officials of an independent agency based on policy or political differences.
On August 25, Trump posted a termination letter on Truth Social that was addressed to Cook, calling for her “immediate removal from office.”
Cook responded in a statement, saying, “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.”
For months, Trump has been pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates as the board continues to keep rates steady. The president has resorted to personal attacks against Fed Chair Jerome Powell, calling the top Fed official a “stubborn MORON.”
During his closely-watched remarks in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell indicated that the Fed was leaning toward a 25-basis-point rate cut in September.
After Texas Christian University (TCU) trounced the North Carolina Tarheels, 48-14, on prime-time national television Labor Day evening, spoiling the much-hyped college debut of six-time Super Bowl champion head coach Bill Belichick, Sam Lazarus was on the TCU team bus, scrolling through bookmarked tweets. In the weeks leading up to the game Lazarus, director of creative media for the TCU football team, took note of the one-sided coverage: Belichick was portrayed as the likely savior of North Carolina football, while TCU—which reached the National Championship game following the 2022 season—was an afterthought. “The good, and bad, of working in social media is that I’m on social media a lot,” says Lazarus, who runs the @TCUFootball account on X. “So I keep receipts.”
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At 12:18 a.m. ET Tuesday, Lazarus quote-tweeted, via @TCUFootball, a Monday morning X post from the sports website Deadspin saying, “Babe wake up, Bill Belichick coaches college football today.” Lazarus added: “Babe go back to sleep.” Two minutes later, Lazarus sent out an August 24 tweet from the North Carolina football account promoting an upcoming Hulu documentary on the team. “When does episode one come out?” he wrote.
A GIF of Stephen A. Smith laughing was appended to sports media personality Skip Bayless’ Twitter prediction of a North Carolina blowout moments later. Then, Lazarus posted an August 30 observation from the X account @Boorish_Sports, which made note of the problems Texas quarterback Arch Manning seemed to be having against the defensive schemes designed by Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia—a former Belichick assistant with the New England Patriots—during Ohio State’s 14-7 win over Texas that afternoon. “If Matt Patricia has Arch Manning in hell what do we think Bill Belichick will do to the poor kid at TCU?” @Boorish_Sports wrote.
That poor kid, TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, completed 27 of 36 passes for 284 yards and two touchdown throws. “I guess we’ll never know,” Lazarus wrote in the quote.
Over six minutes, Lazarus went on an off-the-cuff social media run that, the next day, was the buzz of the sports chatter space just as much, if not more, than TCU’s actual performance on the field. Collectively, these four viral posts expertly trolling Belichick pomp received nearly 225,000 likes, were reposted 11,000 times, and were picked by media outlets such as Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, andUSA Today. The TCU Football X account followed these posts up with a video package cut by Lazarus’ creative team, splicing together media clips touting Belichick and the Heels, with highlights of TCU’s win and the players celebrating after the game. “This is a player’s game,” Lazarus wrote in the post accompanying the video, further puncturing Belichick’s unearned college football aura.
Even sports media superstar Pat McAfee took notice of @TCUFootball’s blasts on his popular ESPN and YouTube program. “Hey social media folks, good work,” McAfee said while clapping.
It was a satisfying night for Lazarus, 32, a Tulsa, Okla., native who swears he wasn’t a wiseass as a kid. “Maybe a dry sense of humor,” he says. And yes, he knows you too may be surprised that TCU’s expert Belichick troll is a ripe-old millennial. “Most people assume that a Gen-Z intern is running social media,” says Lazarus. “‘Give the intern a raise’ is the common expression when something does well on social media. But across the board at every big company, every sports team, social media is probably being run by either a whole team of people, some older, more experienced people.”
Under TCU coach Sonny Dykes, who took over the program in 2021, the football team’s social media feed has leaned edgy, and meme-heavy, by design. TCU’s undergrad population, of some 11,000 students, is small by power football standards: Big 12 foe Oklahoma, for example, has more than 22,000 undergrads, while North Carolina has some 20,000. “We’re fighting for attention with everybody else, but with kind of a hand behind our back, just from the standpoint that our fan base is a little bit smaller,” says Lazarus. “So being able to bring attention to the team and capitalize on big moments is super beneficial.”
Lazarus has cut a career path in the sport that didn’t exist not that long ago: since 2019, he’s worked in the football offices of his alma mater Tulsa, then UCLA, and now TCU, where he started in 2024, running social media for each program. Like college coaches, social media gurus work their way through the ranks of the industry, and in an age where all eyeballs can attract revenues and sponsorships and ultimately, more money in the pockets of players and recruits in a competitive marketplace, Lazarus and his colleagues are valuable. TCU’s general manager, Ryan Dorchester, ran the search to bring Lazarus on board, and his final interview was with Dykes himself. Lazarus didn’t have to clear his Belichick strategy with Dykes, or anyone else in the program or at the school.
“We just pulled the trigger on it,” says Lazarus. “I think it goes back to the trust that’s been built up. Everyone’s very bought in and on the same page. So it allows you to move a little bit more freely. It goes back to doing it long enough, that I know what the lines are.”
Notably, @TCUFootball did not poke fun at Belichick’s relationship with his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson. The rest of the world, after all, can comment on that.
When coaches perform as well as Lazarus did on Monday, they attract attention from other programs who want to poach them, for a healthy raise. But he insists he’s happy and not going anywhere. “The synergy between the staff and the administration and everybody is just so high that this is just one of those places that it’s easy to do the job at,” says Lazarus. “You don’t find that all the time.”
I remind him that many coaches have left for a more lucrative agreement after swearing an allegiance to an employer: Lazarus notes that he was working in Oklahoma, at Tulsa, in 2021 when Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley departed for USC a day after seeming to shoot down rumors he was leaving.
North Carolina and TCU will stage a rematch, in Dublin, next season. Lazarus is comfortable knowing that his sardonic smack-talking can only give Belichick, and the team, more motivational fodder for next season. “It’s just part of the game,” he says. “When you win, you get to play it up, and when you lose, the other team does. If no one’s talking about you after a loss, it probably doesn’t mean you’re in a good spot, right? You kind of want to be the team that people are enjoying beating.”
Still, does Lazarus like TCU’s chances in Ireland? “I’m just focused on the next game, really,” he responds.
Oh no, now even the social media guys are lapsing into coachspeak. He’ll be on a plane to USC tomorrow.
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Judge Mehta rules Google doesn’t have to divest in Chrome in the remedies ruling.
Business leaders are reacting with a mix of disappointment and approval.
Critics say Mehta’s remedies are not sufficient to address the extent of Google’s monopoly.
Google has been spared from the worst, and the business and tech community is weighing in.
On Tuesday, Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google will not be forced to divest from Chrome and its Android operating system, after Google was found in 2024 to have illegally maintained a monopoly.
In the 230-page decision, Mehta said that Google won’t be allowed to have an exclusive contract regarding the distribution of its search engines and apps and that the company must share information such as user interaction data and search index with competitors.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, argued earlier this year that the Justice Department’s proposed remedies were essentially a “de facto divestiture” of its search business and warned they would have “many unintended consequences.”
The DOJ and several states first sued Google in 2020, accusing it of monopolizing online search. Last year, US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had violated antitrust law, ruling that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
Here is what business leaders, including some rivals to Google, have said since the Tuesday ruling.
Gabriel Weinberg
Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo, wrote in a statement on X that he doesn’t believe that the court-order remedies would “force the changes necessary” to address “Google’s illegal behavior.”
“Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors, including in AI search,” said Weinberg, whose company is considered a direct competitor to Google‘s search engine.
“As a result, consumers will continue to suffer. We believe Congress should now step in to swiftly make Google do the thing it fears the most: compete on a level playing field,” Weinberg added.
Tim Sweeney
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, wrote on X Tuesday evening that Google lost the search antitrust case, but “resoundingly” won the remedies phase.
“They can continue doing all of the stuff the court found unlawful, but with some minor new data sharing obligations limiting search default payoffs to 1-year terms,” said Sweeney.
Epic Games, the company that created Fortnite, won an antitrust lawsuit against Google and its app store practices in December 2023. In October 2024, a judge issued a nationwide three-year injunction requiring Google to allow rival app stores to be distributed via Google Play. Google was able to temporarily pause the injunction while appealing the case, but a federal appeals court later upheld the original verdict in July 2025.
“It’s like a defendant robbed a series of banks and the court verdict found them guilty, then sentenced them to probation under which they may continue robbing banks but must share data on how they rob banks with competing bank robbers,” Sweeney added in the thread.
Danielle Coffey
Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, told BI that this is a “missed opportunity,” but it’s not the end.
“We are disappointed that Judge Mehta’s ruling did not include an opt-out of AI without effectively disappearing from search,” said Coffey, “And that leaves us with little options in the use of our content and little to no revenue for our quality journalism.”
The News/Media Alliance submitted an amicus brief, hoping that newsrooms and other content-creating platforms could opt out of appearing in Google’s AI Overview without disappearing from search results altogether.
“There are statistics that show that we’re not seeing traffic come from AI overviews and AI mode,” said Coffey. “By its nature, it’s answering the question rather than redirecting the user.”
Google
Google posted a statement after the ruling that the decision is a response to how AI changed the industry by giving people more ways to find information.
“This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want,” Google said in a statement following the ruling. “That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability.
“Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals,” the statement continued. “We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”
Adam Kovacevich
Adam Kovacevich, the founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a tech-industry coalition, wrote on X on Tuesday that Mehta’s decision is “mindful” even though “longtime Google haters” wanted “fantastical remedies.”
“His ruling today cited the MSFT precedent nine different times: Remedies must be ‘tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy,'” said Kovacevich.
“Mehta spent 29 pages of his ruling discussing how competitive the AI space has become, and how that threatens traditional search engines,” Kovacevich added. “It’s a reminder of how competitive innovation is a hare to antitrust law’s tortoise.”
