On Wednesday, Jeanine Pirro defiantly insisted that her investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was ongoing.
“This investigation continues,” the US Attorney for DC huffed at a press conference. “I am in the legal lane. There are others who are in the political lane. I don’t intersect those two lanes.”
This indignation would have been more credible if she hadn’t spent the past four months harassing one of the president’s most persistent foes. After Pirro’s office subpoenaed the Fed in January, Powell called her bluff and publicly denounced the effort to intimidate the central bank. Then in March, Chief Judge James Boasberg quashed the subpoenas, noting that Pirro’s office had declined the opportunity to present evidence in camera of any actual crime.
“The Court is thus left with no credible reason to think that the Government is investigating suspicious facts as opposed to targeting a disfavored official,” he wrote. “When the evidence of improper motive is so strong and the justifications for these subpoenas are so tenuous, it is hard to see the renovations and testimony as anything other than a convenient pretext for launching a criminal investigation that the Government launched for another, unstated purpose: pressuring Powell to knuckle under.”
Incensed, Pirro vowed to appeal. She also sent a couple of lawyers from her office to bang on the door of the Fed and demand to be let in for a spot inspection.
“Should you wish to challenge that finding, the courts provide an avenue for you; it is not appropriate for you to try to circumvent it,” the Fed’s lawyer Robert Hur wrote. “I ask that you commit not to seek to communicate with my client outside the presence of counsel.”
But Pirro wasn’t done fighting.
“The idea that a judge can stand at the door of a grand jury and tell a prosecutor you’re not allowed to go in when the United States Supreme Court has said you can go into a grand jury based on rumors and suspicion, is an order that we think must be appealed, and we are continuing in this investigation,” she snarled on Wednesday.
In the end, though, politics came for Pirro. Republican Senator Thom Tillis vowed that none of Trump’s nominees to the Fed were getting out of the Banking Committee until Pirro called off her dogs. And, with no ability to replace Powell when his term expires in three weeks, Trump would be stuck with his nemesis indefinitely according to the bank’s own rules.
This morning, Pirro blinked, claiming that she was handing the case off to the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve.
In fact, Powell himself asked Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review the project last July, and the IG confirmed to NBC that there is no new inquiry. But Pirro was willing to fudge the truth to make the climbdown a bit less ignominious — as she has been during this entire ridiculous outing.
“Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so,” she tweeted, acknowledging even as she flounced out that the facts never warranted criminal investigation in the first place.
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Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
The post Pirro Taps Out On Powell appeared first on Above the Law.
On Wednesday, Jeanine Pirro defiantly insisted that her investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was ongoing.
“This investigation continues,” the US Attorney for DC huffed at a press conference. “I am in the legal lane. There are others who are in the political lane. I don’t intersect those two lanes.”
This indignation would have been more credible if she hadn’t spent the past four months harassing one of the president’s most persistent foes. After Pirro’s office subpoenaed the Fed in January, Powell called her bluff and publicly denounced the effort to intimidate the central bank. Then in March, Chief Judge James Boasberg quashed the subpoenas, noting that Pirro’s office had declined the opportunity to present evidence in camera of any actual crime.
“The Court is thus left with no credible reason to think that the Government is investigating suspicious facts as opposed to targeting a disfavored official,” he wrote. “When the evidence of improper motive is so strong and the justifications for these subpoenas are so tenuous, it is hard to see the renovations and testimony as anything other than a convenient pretext for launching a criminal investigation that the Government launched for another, unstated purpose: pressuring Powell to knuckle under.”
Incensed, Pirro vowed to appeal. She also sent a couple of lawyers from her office to bang on the door of the Fed and to be let in for a spot inspection.
“Should you wish to challenge that finding, the courts provide an avenue for you; it is not appropriate for you to try to circumvent it,” the Fed’s lawyer Robert Hur wrote. “I ask that you commit not to seek to communicate with my client outside the presence of counsel.”
But Pirro wasn’t done fighting.
“The idea that a judge can stand at the door of a grand jury and tell a prosecutor you’re not allowed to go in when the United States Supreme Court has said you can go into a grand jury based on rumors and suspicion, is an order that we think must be appealed, and we are continuing in this investigation,” she snarled on Wednesday.
In the end, though, politics came for Pirro. Republican Senator Thom Tillis vowed that none of Trump’s nominees to the Fed were getting out of the Banking Committee until Pirro called off her dogs. And, with no ability to replace Powell when his term expires in three weeks, Trump would be stuck with his nemesis indefinitely according to the bank’s own rules.
This morning, Pirro blinked, claiming that she was handing the case off to the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve.
In fact, Powell himself asked Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review the project last July, and the IG confirmed to NBC that there is no new inquiry. But Pirro was willing to fudge the truth to make the climbdown a bit less ignominious — as she has been during this entire ridiculous outing.
“Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so,” she tweeted, acknowledging even as she flounced out that the facts never warranted criminal investigation in the first place.
Subscribe to read more at Law and Chaos….
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
