Fed: American Justice refuses to reopen the criminal investigation against Jerome Powell

Much ado about nothing, Shakespeare headlined. The formula fits like a glove to the legal soap opera at the Fed headquarters, which has just lost its last episode.

Two days. It did not take much for Justice Minister Todd Blanche to respond to Donald Trump. The president demanded the forced resignation of Jerome Powell and asked him to decide on his fate. The answer came on Friday October 2: Justice will not reopen the criminal investigation targeting the former boss of the Fed.

The minister delivered his verdict in front of the camera. Questioned by Bloomberg on October 2, Todd Blanche decided: “Making mistakes and exercising no supervision over those who lead multi-billion projects is not necessarily a crime. We have closed this criminal investigation and we will not reopen it. »

The minister aligns himself with the report of the Fed Inspector General, published a few days earlier. The document is harsh on management: faulty management, no complete estimate of costs at launch, no guaranteed maximum price. As a result, the budget increased from $1.3 billion to almost $2.4 billion. But he rules out the criminal. Its authors also write that they found no reasonable grounds to believe in a violation of federal law.

For the record, Justice abandoned the criminal investigation in April. A judge had in fact just canceled the subpoenas, these injunctions to produce documents, issued by prosecutor Jeanine Pirro.

Donald Trump, however, hoped for better. The American president demanded a forced and immediate resignation from Powell, accusing him of incompetence and threatening prosecution. Todd Blanche leaves him a consolation prize: if a criminal element appears one day, his services will investigate.

Until then, the person concerned does not move. Of course, he left the presidency of the central bank in May 2026, but still sits on the Governing Council. His successor Kevin Warsh took the matter in hand: in a letter dated September 29, he requested that the federal agency responsible for public real estate manage the completion of the work, and announced the recruitment of an independent auditor.