Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell plans to attend oral arguments on Wednesday at the Supreme Court in a case challenging the power of President Donald Trump to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC on Monday.
Powell's planned attendance comes as the Fed chairman is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., in connection with a multi-billion-dollar renovation of the central bank's headquarters and his testimony to Congress about that project.
The Associated Press first reported on Powell's plans.
For Powell to personally attend oral arguments in such a case is unusual.
But the question of whether a president can fire a Fed governor in the manner that Trump has attempted is viewed within the central bank as having potentially existential consequences.
Powell, in an extraordinary public statement on Jan. 11, revealed that he was under criminal investigation, and called its purported grounds a pretext for its real reason: the refusal of the Fed's Board of Governors, which includes him and Cook as members, to lower interest rates as quickly as Trump demanded last year.
"The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President," Powell said.
Trump said in late August that he was firing Cook from the seven-member Fed Board, citing claims that she committed mortgage fraud in connection with two homes she owns.
Cook denies any wrongdoing, and she has not been charged with any crime.
She sued Trump in federal court in D.C., seeking to block her removal.
A district court judge there on Sept. 9 barred Trump from firing her as the lawsuit continued. A federal appeals court soon after upheld that order.
The Department of Justice, in filings with the Supreme Court, has called the lower court orders barring Cook's removal "yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President's
removal authority — here, interference with the President's authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause."
