Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded former central bank chief Jerome Powell quit the body’s board, despite a watchdog finding no criminal misconduct in a costly Federal Reserve renovation project.
“At no point during our evaluation did we find reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of federal criminal law had occurred,” the Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve said in its report.
Powell took the helm of the Fed during Trump’s first presidency in 2018 and was subsequently reappointed to the position under Democratic president Joe Biden.
At the time, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she would bow to the inspector general’s findings. But on Wednesday, Trump demanded Powell be “forced to resign” from the Fed’s board over the issue and said he was directing his Attorney General to “study the report. “If he doesn’t resign, he should be sued, at the highest level,” said Trump. On Wednesday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the OIG’s report proved that Trump’s DOJ has “no basis to restart the President’s witch hunt against former Fed Chair Jerome Powell.”
In April, the Department of Justice dropped a criminal probe into the then-chairman over the cost overruns after Trump repeatedly criticized and insulted Powell over interest rate policy. The charges were dropped after a senator from Trump’s own party refused to confirm the president’s chosen successor to Powell, saying he would only do so if the criminal probe was stopped.
