(AFP) – Republican US Senator Thom Tillis said Sunday that he would support Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve chairman after the investigation into the current Fed chief was dropped. Tillis had warned that he would oppose Warsh’s confirmation unless a Department of Justice probe into Jerome Powell was stopped. The move was the last major obstacle to a confirmation vote before Powell’s term ends on May 15.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office criminal investigation into Chair Powell was a serious threat to the Fed’s independence, and it needed to end before I could support Kevin Warsh’s confirmation,” the senator from North Carolina wrote on social media. The investigation concerned Powell’s handling of the renovations to the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, whose budget is now estimated at $2.5 billion, up from the initial $1.9 billion. Powell revealed the existence of the investigation in early January, seeing it as a “threat” from President Donald Trump and his administration to pressure the institution into lowering its key interest rate.
A Tillis vote against Warsh would have been enough to block the Senate Banking Committee from advancing the nomination to a confirmation vote on the Senate floor. On Friday, Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, announced the end of the investigation. Pirro indicated that she had instructed the Fed’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to take over and conduct his own investigation, a standard procedure for an administrative, non-criminal inquiry. But she left the door open to restarting the investigation “if the facts warranted it.”
On Saturday, Trump refused to acknowledge the end of this legal saga, stating that he had an “obligation to find out” why the renovation costs had skyrocketed. Tillis wrote on Sunday that he had received “assurances” that the criminal case would only be reopened if the inspector general’s findings warranted it. Warsh “is an outstanding nominee, and it is time for the Federal Reserve to move beyond this distraction and return its full attention to its mission,” the senator said.
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