Elizabeth Warren demands clarity from Jeanine Pirro over threat to reopen investigation into Jerome Powell and Trump’s role Senators Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrats on the Senate banking and judiciary committees, wrote to Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host serving as US attorney for the District of Columbia, demanding that she explain her threat that she could reopen a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, and asking whether Fed governor Lisa Cook is still under investigation.
Both Powell and Cook have been identified by Donald Trump as enemies he wants to force out of the central bank so he can replace them with appointees who might be more compliant with his desire to cut interest rates despite the risk of inflation.
“In recent months, your office has been engaged in a pretextual investigation into Chair Powell,” Warren and Durbin wrote in their letter to Pirro. “Though nominally an examination of his congressional testimony about the Federal Reserve’s renovation of two Washington, D.C. office buildings, the investigation was, in reality, driven by President Trump’s displeasure that Chair Powell had not voted to lower interest rates at his request”.
“Earlier today, you promised a temporary pause to the investigation. Specifically, you announced, ‘This morning the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the (Fed’s) building costs overruns … I expect a comprehensive report in short order … Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry.’ Your announcement also contained a stark warning that you were prepared to reopen the criminal probe at any moment: ‘Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.’”
“These probes should be closed – and should stay closed, with a clear statement that there is no basis for reopening them,” the senators wrote. “Instead, your announcement leaves the door wide open for you to relaunch the criminal probe against Chair Powell – or future baseless investigations into Powell or other Fed Governors and a future Fed Chair – should it once again become politically expedient for you to do so.”
The senators requested written responses to a series of questions about the two investigastions, and about Trump’s role in them, by Monday.