Two prosecutors from the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro showed up unexpectedly at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters on Tuesday, only to be turned away, according to a report.
The central bank’s home in Washington, D.C., is currently undergoing a controversial $2.5 billion renovation, a project that has caused a rift with President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
The renovation prompted the Department of Justice to announce an investigation into Powell, which a federal judge subsequently blocked last month.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the prosecutors making the unannounced visit, Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden, spoke with construction workers and said they wanted to take a tour and check on the progress of the work, but were told they could not access the site without pre-clearance.
They were then given the contact information of the Fed’s legal staff and sent on their way.
“Any construction project that has cost overruns of almost 80 percent over the original construction budget deserves some serious review,” Pirro said in a subsequent statement.
“And these people are in charge of monetary policy in the United States?”
Robert Hur, an outside lawyer for the Fed, fired back in a letter to the U.S. attorney in which he complained that Davis and Vandervelden had arrived “without prior notice” and invoked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s decision to throw out two subpoenas relating to her investigation in last month’s ruling.
Judge Boasberg found that the probe opened by the DOJ had been designed to “harass and pressure” Powell, with whom Trump has been at odds, despite appointing him himself during his first term, over his refusal to cut interest rates according to the president’s whims.
“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,” Hur wrote to Pirro. “I ask that you commit not to seek to communicate with my client outside the presence of counsel.”
The blow-up between the two sides came on the same day that the confirmation process advanced for Kevin Warsh, Trump’s choice to succeed Powell, who will leave office at the end of his term on May 15.
The Senate Banking Committee said Tuesday it would hold Warsh’s confirmation hearing on April 21, despite its chairman, South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, telling Fox News he did not know precisely when Pirro’s inquiry into the cost of the renovation project would be resolved.
That matters as North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis has previously signaled he will not support any nominee to be Powell’s successor until the probe has been concluded.
Trump donned a hard hat to visit the site himself last summer, making a testy appearance alongside Powell, and last month praised Pirro “for having the courage” to investigate the Fed.
He also recently fumed that the contractor on the job “is probably one of the richest men in the country right now.”
Pirro has shown a willingness to bring cases aligned with the president’s wishes since taking office last May, and has hired Davis and Vandervelden to serve as special counsels.
She assigned them, among other cases, to the failed effort to bring charges against six Democratic lawmakers who had urged members of the U.S. military to refuse illegal orders in a contentious video.
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