Trump Says Fed Chair Jerome Powell 'Incompetent' Or 'Crooked' Amid Probe Furore

President Donald Trump criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as either “incompetent” or “crooked” after a Justice Department probe into the central bank’s headquarters renovation sparked backlash across Washington.

“He’s billions of dollars over budget, so, either he’s incompetent or he’s crooked,” Trump told reporters Tuesday as he departed the White House for an economic speech in Detroit. “I don’t know what he is, but he certainly doesn’t do a very good job.”

The probe marks a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the Fed and raises new questions about the institution’s independence. Trump has repeatedly toyed with trying to fire Powell before his term as chair ends in May, and is currently weighing who to nominate as his successor.

But the move to open a criminal investigation, which was disclosed over the weekend, prompted blowback from Republican senators. That development threatens to derail the president’s eventual nominee as the next chair, and with it, his effort to exert greater control over the Fed.

Powell said on Sunday that the Justice Department had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas, stemming from a probe into a renovation project and Powell’s testimony to Congress about it. 

Senator Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, has pledged to oppose all Fed nominations until the matter is resolved. GOP Senators Lisa Murkowski and Kevin Cramer have also criticized the move.

Three former Fed chairs and four former Treasury secretaries representing Republican and Democratic administrations decried the investigation in a joint statement, saying “it has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.”

Trump had previously seemed to distance himself from the investigation, telling NBC News he didn’t know anything about the subpoenas. Trump is a longtime critic of Powell and has repeatedly demanded the Fed lower rates. He has also said that he won’t pick a new chair unless they commit to lowering rates, a litmus test that further shakes the pillars of the Fed’s independence. 

Powell, in a statement Sunday, called the renovation investigation “pretexts” for a broader pressure campaign about rates. 

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” he said.