Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department will not reopen a criminal investigation into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell after a watchdog found no criminal wrongdoing.
Blanche told Bloomberg in an interview Friday that prosecutors are leaving the matter closed, at least for now, following an internal watchdog report tied to the Federal Reserve’s multibillion-dollar headquarters renovation.
“We’re not reopening a criminal investigation into him,” Blanche said.
The statement shut the door on a revived criminal case against Powell over the renovation project. The watchdog report, already released before Blanche spoke, found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
That finding now drives the Justice Department’s posture. No new criminal inquiry. No reopened file. The attorney general made the call public and clear.
The probe context centered on the Fed’s headquarters renovation, a multibillion-dollar project that had drawn official scrutiny. An internal watchdog reviewed the matter and reported no proof of criminal conduct by Powell.
Blanche’s Friday remarks closed off the chance that prosecutors would pick the case back up in the near term. The Justice Department, he said, is not reopening a criminal investigation into the former Fed chairman.
Readers tracking the same renovation fight will recall when Trump directed a review of Fed renovation overruns and pressed for leadership change at the central bank. Cost control and oversight remain live policy questions even when a criminal file stays shut.
Criminal law still demands evidence. The watchdog did not supply it. Blanche treated that conclusion as decisive for the Justice Department’s next step.
A parallel clearance already shaped the public record when the Fed inspector general cleared Powell of misconduct as renovation costs climbed past the $2 billion mark. Blanche’s interview fits that same evidence-first pattern: no crime shown, no criminal case reopened.
Powell faced the investigation risk because of the headquarters project’s scale and price tag. Blanche’s answer did not revise those budget facts. It answered a narrower question: whether DOJ would run a criminal investigation again.
The attorney general’s reply was no. The department will not open or reopen that criminal inquiry after the watchdog’s no-wrongdoing finding.
Administration pressure on Fed personnel has not vanished on other fronts, including the White House push to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook over separate mortgage-fraud allegations. Personnel fights and criminal charging decisions are different tools. Blanche drew that line on Powell.
He also left a thin caveat in the coverage of his remarks: the matter is closed off “at least for now.” Nothing in the public statement sketched a new predicate, a new referral, or a timeline for second looks. The operative word Friday was that DOJ is not reopening the criminal investigation.
Other Justice Department directives under Trump have shown a willingness to stand down when the legal posture calls for it, including when Trump told DOJ to let a firearms ruling stand. Here, Blanche applied a similar discipline to a would-be criminal file against Powell: follow the record you have, not the one activists want.
Federal case outcomes still turn on proof, charging authority, and institutional limits, a point familiar to readers who watched a clemency request run into hard federal-power boundaries after a hung jury. Wanting a different result does not create a prosecutable case.
Blanche’s message was procedural and plain. The watchdog found no criminal wrongdoing tied to the renovation saga. The Justice Department is not reopening a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell.
Accountable government investigates real crimes and refuses to invent them when the record comes up empty.