Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks during the confirmation hearing of Kevin Warsh, nominee for Federal Reserve chair, on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026.Jose Luis Magana/AP
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On Sunday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he would confirm Donald Trump’s nominee for the new Federal Reserve chair after the Department of Justice made “assurances” to him that it would drop its investigation into the current chair, Jerome Powell.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office criminal investigation into Chair Powell was a serious threat to the Fed’s independence,” Tillis wrote in a Sunday morning statement on X. “I take the Department of Justice at its word: the investigation is closed.”
The dispute started when the Justice Department opened a criminal probe into Chair Jerome Powell over costs in funding renovations to the Federal Reserve’s Washington headquarters. But on Friday, Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, posted on X that her office would close its investigation while the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve looks into central bank’s project costs.
“Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so,” Pirro wrote at the end of her Friday statement.
While Tillis may take Pirro’s announcement as a win, when has fully trusting the Department of Justice been a good idea?
“It’s not dropped. They’re looking into the whole thing,” President Trump suggested on Saturday regarding Pirro’s statement. “How can a building that I could have done for $25 million cost $4 billion?”
Pressure has ramped up on Trump to boost the economy and relieve the affordability crisis. He has repeatedly called for dropping interest rates—and his new nominee Kevin Warsh is falling in line. But Powell, who was nominated to become Fed chair in 2017 by Trump, has held interest rates steady and reiterated the central bank’s independence from the president.
As I wrote when news broke of the Justice Department’s investigation this past January, many lawmakers said that the move was part of the president’s public efforts to coerce lower interest rates.
The Trump administration was “actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve,” Tillis said. “It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question,” he continued, as he vowed to oppose the confirmation of any new Fed chair nominee until the matter was “fully resolved.”
During Kevin Warsh’s confirmation hearing last week, Tillis backed up his January statement, saying that while Warsh had “extraordinary credentials,” he would not support a confirmation unless the Justice Department dropped its investigation.
So much for that now.
