Trump’s Witch Hunt of Jerome Powell May Be Over, But Keep Worrying

“The United States wins its point whenever justice is done to its citizens in the courts” is inscribed in the Robert F. Kennedy Building in Washington, D.C., home to the Department of Justice. It signifies that the government’s goal is justice and fairness, rather than merely winning cases. 

In the reality TV show that has become the Trump White House, selective prosecutions and criminal investigations of political enemies have set that aspiration back to the Stone Age.

Our criminal justice system, which the Founders derived from Magna Carta, is supposed to ensure justice is done, not to settle the political scores of a would-be king. “Just the law and the facts” was the mantra of the Justice Department when I served as an assistant United States attorney under Robert M. Morgenthau in the Southern District of New York. (Morgenthau would, of course, go on to be the long-time Manhattan District Attorney.) Politics, much less political retribution, had no place in our considerations.

Trump pursued baseless cases against former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James out of malice. He made it clear that he wanted to see his former national security adviser, John Bolton, indicted for mishandling classified documents—a crime chillingly like the Mar-a-Lago documents matter, which he was cleared of. He has encouraged the prosecution of former CIA Director John Brennan, identified with the 2017 intelligence assessment that found ​Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, which he has called the “Russia Hoax.” Dissatisfied with the pace of the investigation, he removed the Miami career prosecutor in charge of the case.

He threatened treason indictments against six members of Congress who publicly stated in a video that the military should only obey legal orders, not orders to murder crew members clinging to life aboard foundering ships sailing in international waters. A federal grand jury refused to indict the lawmakers. He dismissed the bribery indictment of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams as part of a deal for a crackdown on illegal migrants in New York City.

It’s the Stone Age of criminal justice. Senator Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, put it this way:

There are just two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the president, a loyalist of the president, you can get away with nearly anything, including beating the hell out of police officers,” Murphy said, mentioning the defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol pardoned by Trump as he returned to office. “But if you are an opponent of the president, you may find yourself in jail.

The latest outrage has been the criminal prosecution of Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell, an appointee of Trump, the 45th president, whom the 47th president is furious at for refusing to lower interest rates. This kind of political meddling is precisely why the Federal Reserve system was created over a century ago. Last week, the Justice Department closed the case to grease the skids for Powell’s successor because Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican, refused to approve Trump’s nominee to chair the Fed, Kevin Warsh, unless the witch hunt ended. Tillis, who will leave the U.S. Senate at the end of this term, said that while Warsh was a “great nominee,” he would only vote to confirm him “once the DOJ drops their bogus investigation into Chairman Powell that threatens the independence of the Fed.” 

That the witch hunt seems over doesn’t diminish its malevolence. The threatened prosecution of Powell would surely raise eyebrows in the Supreme Court. In the shadow docket ruling in Trump v. Wilcox, the Court overruled a 90-year precedent that had largely prevented the president from removing members of bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expert-based functions. Ruling with a scalpel, not a cleaver, the majority held that the president could shake up the administrative agencies but, gratuitously (“out of the blue” as Justice Kagan put it in her dissent), carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve. “I am glad to hear it,” wrote Kagan, “and do not doubt the majority’s intention to avoid imperiling the Fed.”

Will America’s central bank stay independent from presidential control? For months, the Trump administration has threatened to fire and criminally prosecute Powell in violation of a law that protects his tenure. It would be a profound mistake for any president to do this. “The road to the hyper-politicized monetary policy you’d expect in Argentina,” The Wall Street Journal recently warned. When the Supreme Court defended the Fed’s unique independence in the constitutional scheme of governance, it reassured markets.

But Trump acted not out of any dawning that the central bank must be independent of the president, but to cut a political deal. Warsh, Trump’s pick as Powell’s successor, is more likely than Powell to bend to Trump’s malevolent political will. During the process of selecting a successor to Powell, Trump made clear that he expected his nominee to lower rates. 

The decision not to prosecute came just two days after a Trump ally, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, vowed to continue the investigation despite a federal judge dealing the inquiry a devastating blow in court last month.

The investigation had focused on whether Powell lied to Congress about costly renovations to the Fed’s Washington headquarters. Trump has long savaged—and distorted—the price of the $2.5 billion project, saying as late as last week that he had to “find out how this can happen.” The sword of Damocles of criminal prosecution drew sharp rebuke from Powell, who trashed the inquiry as part of an effort by Trump to encroach on the Fed’s independence. Former Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative Republican and Trump critic, said, “History will record that Chairman Powell’s courageous … defiance of the President of the United States marked the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, and history will richly reward Jerome Powell with its favor.” As Luttig aptly put it, “The President was TKO’d in the championship fight of his life by the man he had insulted, tormented, and belittled for years.”

Even after prosecutors dropped the case, Trump aides framed the inquiry as ongoing. Blowing on the embers, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted an independent review by the Fed’s inspector general. “The investigation still continues, it’s just under a different authority,” she said.

Even though her prosecution team had reportedly found that there was no case against Powell, Pirro insisted she would “not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so,” raising doubts about whether Powell will come under scrutiny again. When normal prosecutors drop an unprovable case, they are frequently reluctant to apologize, close their files to save face, but allow that they’re open to new facts.

Prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas seeking information about the renovations and Powell’s testimony to Congress. But the subpoenas were blocked in March by James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, who oversees all matters before grand juries. In a blistering opinion, Boasberg described the subpoenas as an attempt “to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the president or to resign and make way for a Fed chair who will,” a withering judicial confirmation of the president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and rule of law.

Trump had clashed with Boasberg before, after the judge, in 2025, issued orders to exfiltrate the Venezuelan men illegally deported to the Cecot Prison in El Salvador. Trump has been repeatedly demanding Boasberg’s impeachment over the past year, particularly after the jurist weighed criminal contempt proceedings against Justice Department officials who defied his orders.

Just two days ago, Pirro appeared defiant, promising to appeal Judge Boasberg’s ruling quashing the subpoena, assailing the decision, saying it was unacceptable that “a judge can stand at the door of a grand jury and tell a prosecutor you’re not allowed to go in.”

But during a closed-door hearing, a prosecutor under Pirro is said to have effectively acknowledged that they had no evidence that Powell had committed any crimes but wanted to press forward with their inquiry anyway. Pirro said that the Federal Reserve’s own inspector general would now scrutinize the costs of the renovations and issue a report in “short order.” Powell himself had directed the Fed’s internal watchdog to investigate the project last year.

The Fed’s inspector general said in a statement on Friday that its “evaluation” of the renovation was ongoing.

Many Republicans had nudged the administration to drop the Powell affair, suggesting that the Senate could be better equipped to investigate the renovations.

On the morning of Warsh’s Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing, Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, argued that Congress could establish a “special committee” devoted to the matter, which would allow Warsh to be confirmed and, in the process, help lawmakers “have access to all the information necessary” to delve into the renovations.

If this weren’t bad enough, Trump recently threatened to fire Powell if he did not leave the Fed when his term ends in two years. (He would be a Fed governor but no longer chair.) If Warsh is not confirmed by May 15, Powell has said that he would stay on as chair temporarily. He can technically remain a member of the Fed’s board of governors until 2028. At a news conference last month, Powell said he had “no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over, with transparency and finality.”

The president is also trying to oust Lisa D. Cook, a Biden appointee to the Fed Board of Governors, over unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud before she took office. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the case, but in oral arguments earlier this year, the justices expressed concern about Fed’s independence if her firing stood.

A president can remove an official only for “cause,” which has long been thought to be gross malfeasance while on the job.

Despite the setbacks to Trump’s plans for revenge, what we are witnessing is a severe test of our constitutional system of governance. A grim outcome could be closer than the horizon. I am reminded of Hamlet’s observation: “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”

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