The Department of Justice on Friday dropped its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, removing a major hurdle to the Senate confirming President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace him.
Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, announced the decision to abandon the Powell probe in a post on X.
Pirro had said on Wednesday that she was committed to continuing the probe, which had been crippled by a federal judge’s ruling quashing subpoenas her office issued to the Federal Reserve related to a multi-billion-dollar renovation of its headquarters in Washington.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, had put an effective hold on the full Senate voting on Warsh’s nomination unless the criminal investigation ended.
Pirro on Friday said that the Fed’s inspector general, an internal watchdog, had been asked to investigate cost overruns in the headquarters project, which had been the purported basis for her criminal probe of Powell.
