All that I would add to Jeff’s comprehensive analysis of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s seismic Sunday night statement is that, outside the MAGA faithful, it has the potential to transcend the partisan divide.
Powell was unambiguous about what he believes motivated the Trump Justice Department’s efforts to subpoena him over his testimony in relation to the central bank’s building renovation project. It “should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure,” he said. According to Powell, the DOJ’s investigation, backed by the threat of a criminal indictment, has nothing to do with his testimony, the renovation project, or even congressional oversight. “Those are pretexts,” he declared. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
To put Powell’s allegation bluntly, the administration is perverting the conduct of dispassionate justice, wielding the power of the state like a weapon to coerce public figures into pursuing the policies the executive branch prefers. In sum: lawfare.
The president’s fans are likely to dismiss Powell’s weighty allegations. That would be foolish. Powell’s remarks support a growing body of evidence that Trump’s DOJ is surreptitiously attempting to advance Trump’s political objectives. But unlike the embarrassingly slapdash attempts to put James Comey and Letitia James in the dock in ways that only “look vindictive,” as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles confessed (“I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that,” she told a Vanity Fair reporter. “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”), the indications that the investigation into Powell is punitive in nature are hard to disregard.
Trump himself appointed Powell to the office he currently holds. The Fed chair has served presidents of both parties at the helm of America’s semi-independent central bank. Powell does not typically engage in partisan politics. He has no record of engaging in political combat with the president, save for his objection to lowering interest rates in response to political pressure rather than in observance of economic trends. Powell rejected those appeals when they came from Joe Biden’s allies, and his position didn’t change with the transition of presidential power.
The American public was never comfortable with the efforts to charge Comey and James with crimes, the evidence of which was debatable and failed to satisfy grand juries, but not nonexistent. The notion that Powell committed prosecutable perjury in his statements to lawmakers regarding the scope and cost of renovations to the Fed’s headquarters is a stretch. Voters are likely to regard it as such.
Trump himself may sense that his DOJ has gone too far. In a Sunday interview with NBC News, Trump said that he had no advance knowledge of a criminal probe into Powell, nor did he support using the Justice Department to muscle the Fed into lowering rates. “I wouldn’t even think of doing it that way. What should pressure him is the fact that rates are far too high,” the president said. “That’s the only pressure he’s got.”
Well then, it’s incumbent on Congress to uncover the origins of this investigation and its motives. After all, it’s their authority that Powell supposedly flouted. If the Fed chair is misleading Congress, then Congress must determine that. If a rogue cabal within the DOJ is misusing resources to strong-arm the Fed, Congress must determine that, too. And if the president is lying — directing Justice to pursue his vendettas and taking no ownership of them when the targeted object to their persecution speaks out — the American people deserve to know that. Their elected representatives are obligated to fill in the blanks.
Powell’s charge is a deadly serious one. It must be treated with the sobriety it objectively warrants. Even if Trump, his allies, and his backers in Congress won’t, the voting public almost certainly will.