Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says he will not step down from the central bank’s board until an investigation launched by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department into Powell’s congressional testimony last year is fully put to rest.
“I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality,” Powell said Wednesday at a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Powell also left the door open to remaining on the board even if the probe ends and Trump’s nominee to succeed him as chair, economist Kevin Warsh, is confirmed by the Senate.
“On the question of whether I will then continue to serve as a governor after my term ends and after the investigation is over, I have not made that decision yet,” Powell told reporters at the Fed’s headquarters. “I will make that decision based on what I think is best for the institution and for the people we serve.”
Powell’s announcement underscores the failure of a yearlong campaign led by Trump and his allies to push Powell out of the Federal Reserve and replace him with someone who is more closely allied with the president.
Powell’s term as chair of the central bank ends in May. But his term as a powerful governor on the Fed’s board, with a vote on interest rates, does not end until 2028.
Powell also said he would remain in place as chair pro tempore of the Fed in the event that Warsh is not confirmed by the time his term as chair ends.
As of Wednesday, Warsh’s Senate confirmation process had not progressed beyond a meet-and-greet phase.
Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed Powell and the Fed in January with questions about a renovation project at the central bank’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Powell said the federal probe was nothing more than an “intimidation” tactic in Trump’s long-running pressure campaign to force Powell to back interest rate cuts.
The administration seized on the renovation project and its apparent cost overruns as evidence of what it said was Powell’s mismanagement of the Fed more broadly.
On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has bucked his party and repeatedly described the Trump-endorsed DOJ probe as “bogus.”
Tillis is using his seat on the powerful Senate banking committee to hold up Warsh’s confirmation process.
On Friday, a federal judge blocked the subpoenas, saying they were served to the Fed with “essentially zero evidence” to back them up.
After the judge’s ruling, Tillis said it “confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence.”
Tillis urged the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, not to appeal the ruling and to let the investigation go.
But Pirro refused and delivered a fiery news conference after the ruling, which her office promptly appealed.
For more than a year now, Trump and his top allies have pressured Powell and other members of the central bank to cut interest rates more often. They have deployed a combination of social media bullying, tirades on cable news and allegations of wrongdoing, but they have little to show for their efforts.
On Wednesday, the Fed’s Open Market Committee voted 11-1 to hold interest rates steady. The only dissenting vote in favor of a rate cut was Trump’s nominee and former White House official, Stephen Miran.