Washington.- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he has not yet closed the investigations against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for alleged fraud in the restoration of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissed the criminal investigation yesterday, Friday.
«The investigation has not been filed. What I want to find out is how a building that I could have built for 25 million dollars could cost 4 billion», Trump told the media shortly before boarding the presidential plane in Palm Beach, Florida, to head to Washington.
On Friday, District of Columbia prosecutor Jeanine Pirro announced on X that her office requested to close the investigations against Powell while the Fed’s inspector general “thoroughly examines the construction cost overruns” of the central bank’s headquarters. Pirro added that she would not hesitate “to reopen a criminal investigation if the facts so warrant.”
“(The supposed fraud) is something very important, and he (Powell) was in charge. So we will get to the bottom of it. Jeanine (Pirro) is fantastic,” Trump added today.
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The election of the new Fed president
Pirro’s announcement coincides with the ongoing process in the Senate to confirm Trump’s candidate to replace Powell as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, and the threat from Republican Senator Thom Tillis to block the decision until the investigation against Powell was dismissed.
The New York magnate has openly shown his discontent with the president of the Fed, who will leave office in May and to whom he demands an aggressive cut in interest rates in the U.S.
Trump has gone so far as to call Powell a “cretin” under the argument that his ‘slowness’ is affecting the American economy.
In March, a federal judge in Washington nullified the subpoenas against Powell, ruling that the investigation opened by the Department of Justice had political motivations.
