{"id":750270,"date":"2026-04-24T17:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/750270\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:10:15","slug":"justice-department-ends-criminal-investigation-of-fed-chair-powell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/750270\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department ends criminal investigation of Fed chair Powell"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department has ended its investigation<\/a> into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell<\/a>, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as his successor. <\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed\u2019s extensive building renovations<\/a> because the Fed\u2019s inspector general would scrutinize them instead.<\/p>\n

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January<\/a> to replace Powell. Powell\u2019s term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.<\/p>\n

Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing<\/a> even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Still, Trump\u2019s previous appointment to the Fed\u2019s board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved<\/a> by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.<\/p>\n

Investigation lacked evidence, a court says<\/p>\n

Pirro\u2019s investigation focused on a $2.5 billion building renovation that Trump criticized sharply<\/a> last year for its cost overruns. Trump visited the building last July and on camera presented to Powell an inflated cost estimate, which Powell corrected as the two stood at the construction site in hard hats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier estimates for the project had put the cost at $1.9 billion. The investigation also covered Powell\u2019s brief testimony about the renovation before the Senate Banking Committee last June.<\/p>\n

Pirro also said on X, \u201cI will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.\u201d Powell has previously asked<\/a> the Fed\u2019s independent inspector general to investigate the cost overruns. <\/p>\n

The probe<\/a> was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump\u2019s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump\u2019s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A prosecutor handling the Powell case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn\u2019t found any evidence of a crime<\/a>, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas<\/a> issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced \u201cessentially zero evidence\u201d to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors\u2019 justification for the subpoenas as \u201cthin and unsubstantiated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation was the most brazen attempt yet by the Trump administration to pressure the Fed to cut its short-term interest rate<\/a>, which indirectly affects other borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and business loans. Trump has obsessively attacked Powell for not cutting the rate from its current level of about 3.6% to 1%, a level that no Fed official supports. <\/p>\n

Probe was intended to intimidate the Fed, Powell says<\/p>\n

Instead, Fed policymakers, including Powell, have said they want to keep rates unchanged while they evaluate the impact of the Iran war, which has sent gas prices soaring, pushing up inflation<\/a>. The increase could be a one-time shift but could also lead to more sustained inflation. The Fed seeks to restrain rising prices by keeping interest rates high, cooling borrowing and spending. <\/p>\n

Powell said in January that the investigation was not really about the renovation or his testimony but \u201cis a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit<\/a> to a construction site at the Fed\u2019s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver \u201cnot appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warsh has promised to be independent<\/p>\n

Warsh said during a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee<\/a> on Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls<\/a> for the central bank to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,\u201d Warsh said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. \u201cNor would I ever agree to do so if he had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warsh\u2019s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn\u2019t immediately cut rates and responded, \u201cI would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said during the hearing that Warsh would be a \u201csock puppet\u201d for Trump. When she asked if Trump had won the 2020 presidential election \u2014 which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden but incorrectly claims<\/a> was decided by fraud \u2014 Warsh said only that the Senate had certified Biden as the winner. When asked for an example of an economic policy on which he disagreed with Trump, Warsh did not name one. <\/p>\n

Robert Hur, an attorney for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, didn\u2019t immediately respond Friday to an email seeking comment.<\/p>\n

Trump sought more control over the Fed<\/p>\n

Trump has taken other unprecedented steps to try to pressure the Fed, including an attempt last August to fire Lisa Cook<\/a>, a member of the Fed\u2019s governing board, who was appointed by Biden. Yet courts have temporarily blocked the firing, and, at an oral argument<\/a> in January, the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic to the argument that Cook should keep her job.<\/p>\n

A key question still to be resolved is whether Powell will remain on the Fed\u2019s board even after his term as chair expires next month. Powell, who serves a separate term as a governor that lasts until January 2028, has said he wouldn\u2019t leave until the investigation was dropped. Yet he did not promise to do so if it was. By remaining on the board, Powell would deprive Trump of the opportunity to fill another seat among its seven members, three of whom are Trump appointees. <\/p>\n

Other presidents have pressured the Fed to keep borrowing costs low, notably Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, though rarely as publicly as Trump. Johnson\u2019s and Nixon\u2019s demands for lower rates, however, are considered key contributors to the 15-year outbreak of high inflation that only ended in the early 1980s after then-chair Paul Volcker ratcheted the Fed\u2019s rate to an eye-watering 20%. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of the Federal Reserve System at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/federal-reserve-system<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department has ended its investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":750271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[64,12785,84,69,12042,455,57,2055,6087,277639,49023,281526,142,82,75621,362,24980,50417,41100,50,241553,80,28967,308900,17600,16538,89,94,67,132,68,93],"class_list":["post-750270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-business","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-policy","tag-federal-reserve-system","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-iran-war","tag-james-boasberg","tag-james-comey","tag-jeannine-pirro","tag-jerome-powell","tag-joe-biden","tag-kevin-warsh","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-letitia-james","tag-lisa-cook","tag-lyndon-johnson","tag-news","tag-paul-volcker","tag-politics","tag-richard-nixon","tag-robert-hur","tag-stephen-miran","tag-thom-tillis","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}