A federal judge on Friday threw out two subpoenas the Justice Department issued to the Federal Reserve, a significant victory for the Fed and its embattled Chair Jerome Powell.
The DOJ, under D.C. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, opened the criminal probe in January into whether Powell lied to Congress about cost overruns at the Fed headquarters in Washington. Powell pushed back publicly with a video statement, asserting that the Trump administration was pursuing the criminal inquiry because it disagreed with the level of interest rates set by the central bank. President Trump regularly pushes for lower rates
US District Judge James Boasberg, in a sharply worded order, essentially agreed.
“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower rates or resigning,” he wrote. “On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”
In a press conference Friday afternoon, Pirro called Boasberg an “activist judge” and accused him of neutering the investigation.
“Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve. This is wrong, and it is without legal authority,” Pirro said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.