It has eluded many observers, but President Donald Trump has suffered mounting legal losses lately on some of his biggest-ticket initiatives, and now comes a new ruling blocking another biggie: his firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The decision—in federal district court in Washington, D.C.—concludes that the firing broke the law because he lacked any rationale rooted in her actual conduct on the job.

Yet buried in the ruling is an amusing tidbit worth highlighting: Judge Jia Cobb cited one of Trump’s own tweets to buttress the case that he’d acted unlawfully. The judge wrote that the timing of Trump’s initial tweet calling for Cook to resign suggested she’d been denied due process. Which opens a window into a bigger story: The lower courts are doing important work in creating concrete fact sets around Trump’s illegal actions that illustrate the deep rot of bad faith eating away at their core—thus exposing an essential element of his ongoing lawlessness.

On August 20, Trump tweeted: “Cook must resign, now!!!” The tweet linked to a news story reporting that the administration had supposedly found that Cook committed “mortgage fraud,” which became Trump’s stated rationale for removing Cook. Trump needed this rationale because by law he can only remove a member of the Fed “for cause.” He needs a legitimate reason to do so, a provision that insulates the Fed’s independence from political meddling.

Trump’s stated rationale is exactly what the court knocked down. The ruling—which reinstated Cook as the case plays out—concludes that this rationale does not satisfy the “for........

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