Democratic senators demand records on Powell probe

Jan 20 (Reuters) – U.S. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin on Tuesday called for President Donald Trump’s administration to turn over records related to the Justice Department’s criminal probe of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“This investigation appears to be a serious misuse of power, and yet another action in a series of President Trump’s unlawful efforts to seize control of the Federal Reserve by any means necessary,” the senators wrote in letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi and to Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte.

Powell earlier this month disclosed that he had received subpoenas related to his remarks to Congress last summer about renovations on two Fed buildings in Washington. He called the investigation a pretext to put pressure on the central bank to cut rates, as Trump has repeatedly called for it to do. 

White House adviser Kevin Hassett played down the federal criminal investigation into Powell last week.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court is to hear arguments on Trump’s attempted firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, which she is fighting. No U.S. president has ever tried to remove a sitting Fed governor. 

The letters, reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, demand details on communications within the administration related not just to Powell and the Fed renovations but also to Cook “and any other Fed official.”

“The Trump Administration’s apparent efforts to seize control of the Fed by criminally prosecuting its Chair and its board members when they fail to acquiesce to the President are dangerous, authoritarian, and unprecedented,” the senators wrote. 

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; editing by Edward Tobin)