The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO-DC) has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
The investigation centers around the skyrocketing costs for the renovation of Federal Reserve headquarters, which greatly exceeded previous estimates of $2.5 billion. Powell confirmed the probe in a statement released Sunday.
“On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June,” Powell said in a statement. “That testimony concerned in part a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings.”
USAO-DC told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it does not comment on ongoing investigations.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to referred Powell to the Justice Department on perjury allegations in July over the testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June.
“I am criminally referring Jerome Powell to the DOJ to investigate perjury regarding his crazy $2.5BN building,” Luna said in a July 17, 2025 X post.
Trump questioned Powell over the renovations during a July 24, 2025 tour of the Federal Reserve headquarters with Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, presenting Powell with documents showing the cost had ballooned to $3.1 billion, a cost overrun of roughly 25%.
“We’re just taking a look at what is happening, it’s a construction job here, building basements where they have not existed or expanding them, it’s a lot of very expensive work, no question about it,” Trump said. “And Tim [Scott] has been with me for a long time and you’re in charge of that committee.”
“Indeed. The reason we wanted to see it was the overruns of the expenses. We wanted to figure out, why?” Scott said.
“So, we are taking a look, it looks it gets about 3.1 billion, it went up a little bit, or a lot. The 2.7 is now 3.1. It just came out,” the president added.
Trump then pulled out a piece of paper showing the cost overruns, with Powell putting on glasses to take a look at the document, as both men donned hard hats — making for what quickly became a viral moment.
“I’m not aware of that, I have not heard that from anybody,” an apparently stunned Powell said at the time, later explaining that the $3.1 billion included “the Martin renovation,” which he described as “a third building.”
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