President Donald Trump is renewing his bid to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook by appointing a committee to investigate her for alleged mortgage fraud, but Cook's lawyers as well as financial and legal experts are questioning the process and whether it will rekindle fears about the central bank's independence.

TD Cowen's Jaret Seiberg thinks the panel will both support the allegations against the governor and open up the Fed's credibility to public doubt.

"The committee is likely to conclude Trump can remove Cook, which will raise fresh questions about central bank independence at a time when we believe the FOMC is more likely to raise rates than to cut them," writes Cowen's managing director.

To Seiberg, it's also clear that the Trump wouldn't appoint an investigative committee if he wasn't trying to create a way to justify removing Cook.

The panel's three members -- all Trump appointees -- will hold a closed-door hearing on Nov. 5 that Cook attend, according to a memorandum dated Wednesday and released Friday said.

The members are Kevin Hassett, head of the National Economic Council; Andrea Lucas, who chairs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Keith Sonderling, acting director of the Government Ethics Office.

Trump tried fire Cook last year, but she challenged the termination in the courts and ultimately prevailed. The Supreme Court blocked the firing, rejecting the government's "halfhearted contention" that Cook received due process. The ruling was widely seen as a victory for Fed independence.

Trump's latest action, Seiberg said, is designed to comply with the due process point raised by the Supreme Court. This may mean Cook could have trouble getting the courts to intervene if she is fired again.

The Supreme Court also gave a good deal of flexibility to the administration in determining the process to remove an official, says Steven Schwinn, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

"A president could manufacture a process, could manufacture reason, and basically push it through a kind of sham process," Schwinn told Barron's.

It's just not clear if that will satisfy the courts in the end, but the Supreme Court has given a lot of deference to the president's decisions thus far, he added.

Legal expert Jane Manner, who has analyzed Trump's ongoing case again Cook, told Barron's that the White House is following the playbook that President William Howard Taft set up in 1912 when he removed two members of the Board of General Appraisers.

The Taft firings were the first recorded presidential "for-cause" removals of officials with statutory protections through a formal inquiry and hearing, said Manners, who is a professor at Fordham University School of Law.

Manners says she was struck by the fact that Cook won't have any right to cross examine at the Nov. 5 hearing.

"I do think that, if this hearing leads to removal (as it likely will), the question that will ultimately be litigated is whether the reasons stated by Trump for the removal constitute cause under the Federal Reserve Act," Manners says. The Federal Reserve Act states that Fed governors can be removed by the president only "for cause."

Reigniting the independence debate would probably keep Governor Jerome Powell from leaving the Fed, Seiberg said. This could resurface Trump's attempts to remove Powell, the former Fed chair, over alleged misconduct in the renovation of Fed buildings. The Fed hasn't found any evidence of misconduct.

In August, the White House said it again intended to pursue Cook's termination for alleged mortgage fraud. Cook responded with a five-page letter and exhibit to defend her actions in acquiring two properties in 2021.

The appointment of an investigate committee has Cook's attorneys, Abbe D. Lowell and Norm Eisen, pushing back on the legitimacy and objectivity of the Nov. 5 hearing.

"In light of the President's repeated statements that he has already decided to fire Governor Cook -- regardless of the facts and evidence -- we have grave doubts that this 'hearing' is a legitimate one that would conform to the law," the lawyers said in a statement.

Lowell and Eisen said they are communicating with the White House to evaluate whether the hearing has a "possibility of being a genuine one and not simply a box checking exercise."

The allegations stem from several mortgages Cook took out for homes in Michigan and Georgia. The White House alleges Cook signed documents that listed both properties as primary residences.

In Cook's response to the allegations, her attorneys said it was an "entirely inadvertent oversight" that her Atlanta condominium was listed as a primary residence and added that such mistakes are common.

All of the allegations against Cook center on conduct that took place before she became governor. She was appointed in 2022 by then-President Joe Biden to fill an unexpired term. She was reappointed in 2023 to her current term, which is set to end in January 2038.