Attorney General Alan Wilson supports President Trump’s authority to remove bureaucrats

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson joined 22 other states in filing a friend-of-the-court brief supporting President Trump’s authority to fire Lisa Cook, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

“I’m proud to stand with President Trump in this case. I think the Constitution and federal law give him the authority to fire her in these circumstances, and he is on solid ground in attempting to fire her for cause. At the end of the day, the President gets to exercise executive power—not unelected bureaucrats,” Attorney General Wilson said.

In October, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump could not remove Cook from the Board immediately, saying the Court would hear arguments in January. The brief, signed by the attorneys general of 22 states and the Arizona Legislature, asks the Court to allow the President to remove her.

President Trump says he can fire her for cause because he alleges Cook falsified records so she could get better mortgage terms before joining the Fed in 2022.

The states argue in their brief that Cook is challenging a part of the Federal Reserve Act that allows the President to remove her for cause. “Any such restriction on the President’s authority to remove should be construed as narrowly as possible to avoid the constitutional doubts raised by interference with the President’s presumptive power to remove executive officers under Article II, particularly principal officers. On top of that, the history of how courts, including this Court, have understood ‘for cause’ removal restrictions counsels strongly against the judiciary’s second-guessing the decision of the President to remove Cook,” they write in their brief.

Joining Attorney General Wilson in the brief are the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, and the Arizona Legislature.

You can read the brief here.