Judge rejects subpoenas of Fed in Jerome Powell case, DOJ to appeal

Amara Omeokwe, Bloomberg News on Mar 13, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Jeanine Pirro vowed to continue her investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell after a judge rejected subpoenas issued to the central bank, threatening to delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Powell’s successor.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the government had advanced no evidence to justify the subpoenas — relating to renovations to the Fed’s headquarters and Powell’s comments about the project — and said they clearly reflected an “improper motive” of retaliating against Powell over policy differences. Pirro, who leads the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, called the ruling wrong and said they would appeal the decision.

“This process has been arbitrarily undermined by an activist judge,” Pirro said in a news conference Friday. “The process should have been allowed to run its course, and it wasn’t. And shame on them.”

President Donald Trump nominated Warsh, a former Fed governor, to replace Powell when his term as chair ends in May. North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, has vowed to block any Fed nominations as long as the DOJ investigation of Powell remains unresolved.

“This ruling 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 said Friday in a post on social media. “Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Fed declined to comment.

DOJ issued subpoenas to the Fed in January threatening a criminal indictment, Powell said at the time. The subpoenas are related to the Fed’s ongoing $2.5 billion renovation of its headquarters in Washington and testimony Powell provided about the construction before the Senate Banking Committee last year.

Powell, in an unusually forceful video response to the subpoenas, characterized the investigation as motivated by the Fed refusing to set interest rates according to the preferences of Trump.

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg said in the opinion, which was dated March 11 and made public March 13. “On the other side of the scale, the government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

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(With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres.)

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