Judge who will weigh Trump’s move against Fed has tangled with his policies before

The judge who will immediately weigh President Donald Trump’s effort to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook has already pushed back against one of his other signature efforts to expand presidential power: mass deportation.

Cook’s lawsuit Thursday was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington, D.C., by Joe Biden in 2021. Cobb, a former public defender, was Biden’s first appointment to Washington’s district court, which has 15 full-time judges.

In a ruling earlier this month, Cobb blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to rapidly deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had fled violence or oppression in their home countries. The immigrants had previously been permitted to enter or remain temporarily in the U.S. under a program known as parole.

“Will they be summarily removed from a country that — as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges — may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?” Cobb wrote in an 84-page decision against the deportation effort.

It was Cobb’s most pointed pushback to a Trump policy, but it wasn’t her first brush with the legal tumult that has defined Trump’s second term.

She also heard a pair of legal challenges to Trump Justice Department appointees’ demand for the names of all FBI personnel who worked on investigations related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

At Cobb’s urging, the two sides worked out a compromise under which DOJ agreed not to distribute the names outside the federal government without advance notice. The FBI agents who brought the lawsuits wanted to use them to seek long-term protection against their names being disclosed and retaliation for their work, but Cobb dismissed the cases last month at the Trump administration’s request.

Although Trump appointees have fired dozens of FBI agents who played roles in Jan. 6 investigations, Cobb said the possibility of DOJ publicly identifying the agents on the list was “too speculative” for the lawsuits to continue. Still, she seemed skeptical about the administration’s crusade against those involved in Jan. 6 probes, pressing DOJ lawyers to explain “what was so wrong” about how those probes were conducted.

Now, Cobb will preside over the first phase of Cook’s lawsuit seeking to remain as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite Trump’s attempt to fire her. Cobb set a quick hearing for Friday at 10 a.m. to consider Cook’s request for an immediate order blocking Trump’s attempted ouster.

But Cobb almost certainly won’t have the final say on the matter. Any ruling she issues on Trump’s bid to fire Cook will likely be appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — and after that, the Supreme Court.

Prior to Trump’s second inauguration, Cobb’s most high-profile case was the trial and conviction of Jan. 6 defendant Ryan Samsel, who was the first rioter to charge across police lines, precipitating the broader attack on the Capitol. Prosecutors had urged Cobb to put Samsel in prison for 20 years, citing his multiple acts of violence that day and continued defiance — but his February sentencing was called off after Trump issued a blanket pardon to all Jan. 6 rioters.

Stephen Brennwald, a criminal defense attorney who has handled several complicated cases before Cobb — including one of Samsel’s co-defendants — said he views Cobb as an “even-handed” judge who makes litigants feel heard even when she rules against them.

“While I certainly haven’t won all of the motions I’ve filed or the arguments I’ve made, you never left thinking that she was unfair or biased or anything other than doing her best to make the right call,” Brennwald said.

Cobb, 45, is a graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School. After working at the D.C. Public Defender Service early in her career, she joined a Washington-area firm that primarily handles employment-related litigation.

The Senate confirmed her, 52-45, in October 2021.