The Senate may soon be able to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee for chair of the Federal Reserve after a crucial swing vote said on Sunday that he would lift his opposition to Kevin Warsh.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of the chamber’s Banking Committee, had for weeks held up the confirmation process over his opposition to a criminal probe opened by the Justice Department into current Fed chair Jerome Powell. The case hinged on testimony Powell gave to Congress about a renovation project at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington that some Republicans have alleged was inaccurate.
Tillis and other critics of the president had suggested the probe was politically motivated and had been launched to pressure Powell into lowering interest rates.
But on Sunday, days after the DOJ confirmed that it would drop the probe into Powell, Tillis said he would join his colleagues in supporting Warsh.
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“I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh. I think he’s going to be a great Fed Chair,” Tillis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
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Although the Justice Department said it would drop its probe, the central bank’s inspector general plans to continue a review begun last summer of the Fed chair’s handling of the building renovation project.
On Sunday, Tillis said he was happy to see the criminal case dropped, adding that he had spoken to representatives from the DOJ and received “assurances” that the case would not be reopened unless the inspector general recommended it.
“I take the Department of Justice at its word: the investigation is closed, and any appeal of Judge Boasberg’s ruling will be with respect to legal principles and not for the purpose of reissuing subpoenas,” Tillis wrote in a post on X Sunday. “Only a criminal referral from the inspector general would cause a reopening of the investigation.”
The criminal probe was opened after Trump spent months demanding, to no avail, that the Fed chair lower interest rates. The president has also said he expects Powell’s successor to lower rates, and suggested he may sue Warsh if he fails to do so.
Tillis suggested that the president, or those seeking to curry his favor, may have been using the investigation as leverage over Powell in their quest to lower interest rates — and said he was relieved to see the probe dropped.
“If we had allowed this to occur, I think it would have had devastating consequences for our financial systems and the markets worldwide,” Tillis said Sunday.
“I feel like there were prosecutors in D.C. that thought this was going to be a lever to have Mr. Powell leave early,” he added.
The Senate Banking Committee, which appears poised to advance Warsh’s nomination with Tillis’ support, is set to vote on his candidacy as early as this week.
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