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A day after U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced she had directed her office to close its investigation into the Federal Reserve over a building project, President Donald Trump said he wants to know what happened.
“Well, I want to find out,” the president told reporters before boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida on Saturday, after a journalist asked if he agreed with Pirro’s decision.
“You know, it’s not dropped,” he continued. “They’re looking into the whole thing about the crisis. What I want, with the IG, what I want to look at is how can a building that I could have done for $25 million cost $4 billion? That’s a big thing.”
Trump also mentioned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying, “he was in charge.”
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“So we’ll get to the bottom of it,” he added. “Yeah, I think Jeanine is fantastic. And she worked with other people on that. I tell you, I want to find out, I have an obligation to find that — this was done during Biden, but I have an obligation to find out how does it — I would have done that building for $25 million and had money left over. And it would have been open a long time ago.”
The Fed had an approved budget of $2.46 billion for the renovations, but went over budget because of things like more asbestos than expected and costs going up during the course of the renovation, the Fed says on its website.
Pirro said Friday the Fed’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, would take over the investigation, moving it from the hands of federal prosecutors into those of a longtime government watchdog.
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Powell was under investigation over statements he made to Congress related to the management of the renovation costs.
Powell revealed in a video announcement in January that the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the Fed, calling it an unprecedented attempt to use “intimidation” to force him to lower interest rates.
In the lead-up to the investigation, Trump and Powell’s relationship had grown increasingly rocky, as Trump became frustrated over interest rates and began targeting Powell, whom he nominated in 2017. Trump called Powell a “fool” and demanded in March that he drop rates “immediately.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has a background in finance and sits on the Senate Banking Committee, had vowed to block Kevin Warsh’s confirmation because of the DOJ’s investigation, after Trump nominated Warsh to replace Powell, whose term was set to expire on May 15.
Tillis had claimed the DOJ’s investigation was political and would improperly interfere with markets, and he accused Pirro of seeking “brownie points” with Trump by opening it. “It’s not cute,” Tillis said during a television interview in February.
During his confirmation hearing this week, Tillis told Warsh, who previously served on the Fed’s Board of Governors, that he had “extraordinary credentials” but that he could not vote to advance his nomination in the Senate until the DOJ ended its investigation.
Horowitz, who will now investigate the Fed building renovation costs, has drawn a mix of praise and criticism from Republicans while serving as DOJ inspector general for more than a decade. He was one of the few high-profile inspectors general spared during Trump’s historic cull of government watchdogs last year and has found allyship in key figures like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Pirro closing the investigation could pave the way for Warsh’s nomination.
Trump said he wanted to see the investigation through “for the country.”
“It’s much tougher, much more expensive to build a hotel than an office,” the president said, mentioning his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., that he sold in 2022 and was renamed the Waldorf Astoria.
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He continued, “I want to find out how can a building of that size cost for whatever it’s going to be. Nobody knows, by the way, what it’s going to be. Kevin is going to be fantastic. Kevin Warsh, he may never get to be in that building.”
Trump told reporters that his nomination should now going smoothly, “but whether it is or not, somebody has to find out why that building that should have cost $25 million is costing billions of dollars. And you know why they have to find it out? For other buildings, because that’s not the only one. I think that’s the most egregious example.”
Fox News’ Ashley Oliver and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
