Washington — Federal prosecutors are ending their criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced, clearing a key obstacle for the confirmation of Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s pick to take over as head of the central bank’s Board of Governors.
Pirro wrote on X that the Fed’s inspector general has instead been asked to look into potential cost overruns in the central bank’s renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
“Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry,” she wrote. “Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.”
Pirro said that she expects the inspector general’s office to provide her with a “comprehensive report” on its findings and said she is “confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas.”
Powell’s tenure as chairman of the central bank’s Board of Governors is set to end in May, and the president nominated Warsh to succeed him. But Warsh’s path to the Fed faced a key hurdle, as Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he would not vote to confirm any nominee until the Fed investigation was dropped.
Warsh testified before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday and pledged that the central bank would remain “strictly independent” in its monetary policy decisions.
The Fed’s inspector general is Michael Horowitz, who served in the role at the Justice Department and reviewed the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the 2016 election and alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
ABC News first reported Friday that the Justice Department was set to drop the Powell probe. The Fed declined to comment. The White House said it is confident that the Senate will confirm Warsh as the Fed’s next chairman.
“American taxpayers deserve answers about the Federal Reserve’s fiscal mismanagement, and the Office of the Inspector General’s more powerful authorities best position it to get to the bottom of the matter,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
The announcement comes days after prosecutors from Pirro’s office made an unannounced visit to the Fed’s headquarters and attempted to gain access to the building’s ongoing renovations. The two prosecutors and an investigator from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. were denied entry and given contact information for the Fed’s legal team.
The investigation into Powell burst into public view in January when the chairman revealed in a video that the Fed had received grand-jury subpoenas as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The subpoenas threatened an indictment related to Powell’s testimony before the Banking Committee in June 2025 about the years-long project to renovate the Fed’s offices.
But in March, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia quashed the pair of subpoenas, saying they were a pretext to pressure Powell into voting to lower interest rates or resigning.
The Justice Department asked the judge to reconsider his decision, but he denied that request earlier this month.
Pirro’s move to end the probe appears to be an abrupt about-face. At a press conference Wednesday, she told reporters “this investigation continues.”
“I am in the legal lane, there are others that are in the political lane. I don’t intersect those two lanes,” Pirro said, adding she is “going forward. We are appealing the decision of Judge Boasberg.”
The Justice Department, however, did not ask the federal appeals court in Washington to review the district judge’s ruling.
The probe involving Powell came amid Mr. Trump’s frequent airing of frustrations with him for declining to rapidly slash interest rates. The president often hurls insults at the central bank’s chair, calling him “a jerk” and “too late.” Mr. Trump threatened to fire Powell earlier this month.
Mr. Trump tapped Powell for Fed chairman in 2018, during his first term, and he was appointed to a second four-year term by former President Joe Biden. While his term as chair is winding down, he can remain a governor or the Fed’s Board until early 2028. Most Fed chairs, however, have resigned from the board after their tenures as chair end.
The president has soured on Powell over his decisions regarding interest rates, and he zeroed in on the Fed’s renovation project as a line of attack against the chairman. After Mr. Trump suggested last year that the rebuilding could be grounds to fire him, the two men donned hardhats and visited the Fed’s headquarters to survey the renovation project, where they were at odds over the total cost of the construction.
The Fed is self-funded and not reliant on taxpayer dollars.
The renovations of the central bank’s headquarters were first approved in 2017 and are set to be completed next year. The estimated cost of the project — which encompasses two buildings — has risen from $1.9 billion to nearly $2.5 billion. The Fed said the cost increases are a result of changes to the original building designs after consultations with review agencies; a rise in the cost of material, equipment and labor; and unforeseen conditions like contamination in the soil and more asbestos than was initially expected.
The inspector general at the central bank has twice conducted audits regarding renovation projects, and Powell told the Senate last year that he asked the internal watchdog to “take a fresh look at the project.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-drops-probe-into-fed-chair-jerome-powell/
