U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook will file a lawsuit to prevent President Donald Trump from firing her. Her lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement that Trump's attempt to fire her is based solely on a referral letter and lacks any factual or legal basis.

The statement was issued a day after Trump said he would fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the central bank's governing body, for alleged "deceitful and potential criminal conduct" related to mortgages she took out in 2021.

Trump told reporters that he had "good people" in mind to replace Cook but would abide by any court decision that allowed her to stay.

Trump pressured the Fed to lower interest rates during his first term in the White House and he has escalated that campaign in recent months. The president has demanded that rates be cut by several percentage points and threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, although he recently backed down from that.

Cook's departure would allow Trump to pick a majority of the Fed's seven-member board, including two incumbents and the pending nomination of White House economist Stephen Miran.

Trump said he may consider Miran, whom he nominated for a temporary seat on the Fed board that is due to expire in January, for Cook's seat if it becomes vacant. The Wall Street Journal reported that former World Bank Group President David Malpass, a longtime Trump ally, was also discussed for the job.

The Fed said in a statement that Cook and other board members serve 14-year tenures and cannot be removed easily from office, in order to ensure that monetary policy decisions are based on economic data and "the long-term interests of the American people."

Though Trump said on Monday Cook's firing was "effective immediately," the Fed's statement indicates that it sees Cook's status as unchanged.

The attempt to influence U.S. monetary policy has shaken confidence in the dollar and U.S. sovereign debt, and sparked fears of global financial turmoil. The Wall Street Journal and AFP reported Dow Futures as well as Asian stocks slipped on Tuesday, following Trump's order to oust Cook and his renewed threats to levy tariffs on U.S. trading partners and impose export controls on microchips.

Mortgage questions

Trump said in a letter to Cook that he had "sufficient cause" to fire her because she described separate properties in Michigan and Georgia as primary residences on mortgage applications before she joined the Fed in 2022.

In recent months Trump has fired several Black women who held senior government positions, including the head of the Library of Congress and the chair of the National Labor Relations Board.

William Pulte, a Trump appointee who is director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, first raised questions about Cook's mortgages last week and referred the matter to U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi for investigation. Bondi has yet to say whether the Justice Department will take action. Cook took out the two mortgages in question when she was an academic.

She is due to serve on the Fed board through 2038, but the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 allows removal of a sitting governor "for cause." That power has not been tested until now.

Peter Conti-Brown, a scholar of the Fed's history at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, noted that the mortgage transactions preceded her appointment to the Fed and were in the public record when she was vetted and confirmed by the Senate.

"The idea that you can reach back, turn the clock backward and say, you know, 'All these things that have happened before now constitute fireable offenses from your official position' is to me incongruous with the entire concept of 'for cause' removal," Conti-Brown said.

(With input from Reuters)