President Donald Trump said Wednesday a federal probe into Jerome Powell will continue and that he will fire the Federal Reserve chairman if he refuses step down.
Powell said in March he will not leave his position at the Federal Reserve until an investigation into the renovation of the agency’s headquarters. Bartiromo asked Trump during an interview that aired Wednesday about Powell declaring he had “no intention” to leave the Federal Reserve after his chairmanship expires.
“Well then I’ll have to fire him, OK, if he’s not leaving on time,” Trump told Bartiromo. “I’ve held back firing him. I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial, you know. I want to be uncontroversial.”
While Powell’s term as chairman will end in May, his term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board does not expire until January 31, 2028, according to the Federal Reserve’s website. Trump and Powell have clashed over the Fed’s failure to lower interest rates at a pace desired by the president.
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Trump also said that an investigation into the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters would continued, even if Powell left the agency.
“It’s more than a criminal probe. It’s a criminal probe, I guess, but it’s also a probe of incompetence. How do you take a little building? I built a hotel for $201 million that’s bigger than that building down the road, it’s a little while ago, 7 years ago, 8 years ago, I built the Trump Hotel, which I sold to Waldorf Astoria, a good deal, I built it like around $200 million in construction,” Trump said. “They’re gonna spend maybe $4 billion and you know what? I’m not sure the thing’s ever gonna open, you know, I do that stuff very well. I went past the site the other day. I was driving past, they said take me past the Federal Reserve building. It took me past. There’s very little work done inside.”
“[Federal Reserve Chairman nominee] Kevin [Warch] may never get to have the use of that building, and he told me something very interesting,” Trump continued. “He said the saddest part of it is they ripped down the most beautiful building of them all. They ripped it down. He said they had boardrooms and various rooms in that building that were the most beautiful in Washington and they ripped it down What they’ve done to that, so it is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetent and we have to show the incompetence of that.”
Trump had questioned Powell over the renovations during a July 24 tour of the Federal Reserve headquarters with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, presenting Powell with documents showing the cost for the project had ballooned to $3.1 billion, a cost overrun of roughly 25%.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida referred Powell to the Justice Department in July, alleging he lied to the Senate Banking Committee about renovations to the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in June.
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