President Donald Trump made his biggest step yet toward trying to seize control of the Federal Reserve on Monday, by ordering the firing of one of its seven governors: Lisa Cook.

The firing was legally dubious — Fed governors serve 14-year terms; Cook term expires in 2038, and she’s said she’ll contest her firing — but Trump relied on a pretext. Cook, he claimed, had committed mortgage fraud by declaring two separate residences as her primary residence.

The official who supplied that pretext — and who has been at the center of Trump’s efforts to wield mortgage fraud accusations to get his enemies prosecuted, as well as to get Fed chair Jerome Powell fired — is the 37-year-old director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte.

In addition to Cook, Pulte has used his position to

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