U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he makes an announcement about lowering the cost of drug prices, at the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 19, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
On Sunday, January 11, the news broke that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is conducting a criminal investigation of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell —who has been clashing with President Donald Trump over monetary policy. And it didn't take Trump's critics long to attack the probe as a frivolous, politically motivated waste of DOJ resources.
Much of the criticism came from Democrats, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). But some conservative Republicans called Trump and the DOJ out as well, including Sens. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) —who told NBC News, "It's clear the administration's investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion…. The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer."
On X, formerly Twitter, Tillis tweeted, " I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved."
According to Politico reporters Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, however, the biggest threat to DOJ's Powell investigation may be Trump himself.
"President Donald Trump's campaign to criminally investigate his political adversaries keeps running into an intractable problem: his mouth," the Politico journalists explain in an article published on January 13. "The news Sunday that the Justice Department has been secretly weighing charges against Fed Chair Jerome Powell — a frequent target of Trump's attacks — alarmed lawmakers, who called it an effort to weaponize the justice system to affect economic policy. But Trump's freewheeling commentary has gotten in the way of past prosecutions he demanded — and could get in the way this time, too."
The more that Trump rails against his opponents, Cheney and Gerstein observe, the more DOJ probes of them suffer.
"Trump openly called for the prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — who were subsequently charged by a prosecutor he handpicked for the job — and has demanded similar action against former special counsel Jack Smith, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and others against whom he harbors grudges for investigating him in recent years," the Politico reporters note. "Trump has long attacked Powell over his monetary policy, but more recently, he has focused on Powell's management of the Fed itself, even suggesting Powell could be investigated or sued for his role overseeing a building renovation beset by cost overruns."
Cheney and Gerstein add, "In July, Trump called on Powell to 'resign immediately'…. Trump's loose talk about Comey and James helped sink those prosecutions, at least for now, and it has already complicated other criminal and civil cases, including the effort to prosecute and deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Trump's bid to remove Powell's colleague, Fed governor Lisa Cook."
Read Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein's full article for Politico at this link.