The One Man Standing Between Trump and His New Fed Chairman Refuses To Back Down

The one man standing between President Trump and the confirmation of his new Federal Reserve chairman is not backing down. Senator Thom Tillis tells The New York Sun that even after Mr. Trump nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh for the post, he is sticking by his insistence that the inquiry into chairman Jerome Powell must be resolved before he allows the nomination to advance. Last month, Mr. Powell — who was first nominated to lead the Fed by Mr. Trump and then renominated by President Biden — announced that he had been served grand jury subpoenas as part of a criminal investigation. The probe rests on allegations that there is some malfeasance in the over-budget renovations at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Mr. Powell said in a video message on January 11. He declared that America’s monetary policy will not be “directed by political pressure or intimidation.”That same night, Mr. Tillis announced that he would not support any nominee to serve at the Federal Reserve until the investigation into Mr. Powell was “resolved.” “If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question,” Mr. Tillis said at the time. In an interview at the Capitol on Thursday, Mr. Tillis told the Sun that he is standing firm in his position, even though he believes Mr. Trump’s nominee to be chairman, Mr. Warsh, would do a fine job. “I’ll be happy to introduce him [at his confirmation hearing] and encourage support,” Mr. Tillis says of Mr. Warsh, pending a resolution of the Powell matter. “But none of that happens before the probe’s over.”Mr. Tillis is a senior member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which is charged with either advancing or rejecting nominees for positions at the Federal Reserve. With the committee divided between 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats, any one GOP member can effectively kill a nominee if he or she votes with all members of the minority party.If the investigation into Mr. Powell is not resolved by the time Mr. Warsh has his confirmation hearing, Mr. Tillis’s “no” vote would almost certainly leave the committee deadlocked at 12–12. Such a situation means that a nominee is not reported favorably to the floor.The only way to move Mr. Warsh’s nomination to the floor for final confirmation in that situation would be through the process of discharging him from the committee, which is no sure thing. By using such a procedure, the Republican majority would effectively open up the floor to unlimited debate, at which point Democrats could seize control of the chamber and delay all other legislative business which the majority leader, Senator John Thune, may want to conduct. “They’ve got to resolve it,” Mr. Tillis told the Sun of the Justice Department investigation. “I mean, they’ve got to determine how long they want to be in this posture. I can see as a U.S. attorney, [Jeanine Pirro] maybe … doesn’t care about the implications of the [Federal Reserve] Board of Governors. I do.”When asked by the Sun if there was any chance he would waver in his demand for a swift resolution of the Powell investigation, Mr. Tillis responded: “None. Zero. Nada.”The retiring North Carolina senator also raised concerns about the ongoing legal travails of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who is now engaged in a legal battle to keep her job after Mr. Trump attempted to fire her last year. Courts have so far allowed her to remain at her post while that process plays out. “It’s process — not person. We’ve got some great [nominees],” Mr. Tillis said. “I think Warsh — I think anybody that was on the shortlist were good picks by the president. I can see them all getting confirmed in this Congress.”Mr. Tillis says he has not yet spoken to Mr. Warsh, who served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 after being nominated by President George W. Bush. He also has not had to speak privately with the White House thus far. “I don’t think my statement is one where you’ve got to read between the lines,” Mr. Tillis said. “I do like [Mr. Warsh]. I hate that he’s going to be swept up in that, but I feel like they needed to know early so that there’s no surprise,” the senator told the Sun. “I would advise [the White House] to kind of hold off on sending the [nomination] forward until this is resolved.”The crux of the criminal investigation into Mr. Powell is that renovations at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters have gone both over schedule and over budget. Mr. Trump and his allies say they could see some potential wrongdoing in those facts, despite Mr. Powell’s adamant denials. Mr. Tillis says that, given the fact he and other Banking Committee members visited the Fed to see the results of the renovation, he would have been interviewed by investigators if this were a serious probe. “The majority of the Republicans have said that they were at the scene of the alleged crime and they saw no criminal activity,” Mr. Tillis told the Sun. “That should be a signal to a prosecutor that we were there. [They] haven’t interviewed me.”

The One Man Standing Between Trump and His New Fed Chairman Refuses To Back Down

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