The Senate should move to advance Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve chairman, even as a federal criminal investigation into current chair Jerome Powell continues, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday.
Bessent, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said he believes after speaking this week to Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee that they “are going to proceed” with a nomination hearing.
“I think it’s important to get the hearings underway, and I think we have an agreement to do that,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has vowed to block Warsh’s nomination from moving through the Banking Committee unless the Department of Justice drops its probe into Powell.
Trump, however, has said the criminal probe, led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, should continue to the end, setting up a potential impasse. Powell, whom Trump appointed during his first term, has declined to raise interest rates as much as the administration has urged him to do.
Tillis has also rejected an idea, floated this week, to move the Powell investigation from the DOJ to the Banking panel.
Bessent told CNBC that the White House “has no influence on what the U.S. Attorney for D.C. does.”
“What I was proposing was that the Senate Banking Committee also investigate” the Powell matter, which centers on his prior testimony about cost overruns on an ongoing renovation of the Fed’s headquarters, Bessent said.
“We’ll see where the investigation goes with Jeanine Pirro’s office. There were subpoenas issued. But that doesn’t have to mean that there are charges,” he said.
“They reached out to the Fed in December via email, didn’t get responses, and then issued subpoenas. So we’ll see what the state of that is.”
After speaking privately with Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Bessent said, “my understanding is that we are going to proceed with the hearing.”
