U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro asked a court Monday to vacate its decision quashing two grand jury subpoenas in her criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, arguing the matter is now "moot" because the investigation has closed. The filing effectively ends a politically charged probe that a federal judge had already gutted, and that never produced evidence of a crime.
The move, reported by The Hill, signals that Pirro will not pursue the appeal she once promised. Instead, prosecutors told the court that "even in the event of a successful appeal to the D.C. Circuit, the United States cannot obtain meaningful relief because the investigation has closed."
That single sentence tells the story. The Department of Justice opened a criminal probe into Powell's handling of the Federal Reserve's headquarters renovation in Washington, D.C. A court blocked the subpoenas. DOJ closed the investigation. And now the government wants the court's ruling wiped from the record, while insisting it still disagrees with the judge's reasoning.
The investigation centered on cost overruns tied to the Fed's D.C. campus renovation project. The project was initially estimated at $1.9 billion and has risen to at least $2.5 billion, National Review reported. President Trump had publicly challenged Powell on claims the figure reached roughly $3.1 billion.
Pirro's office examined whether Powell made false statements to Congress or committed fraud connected to the renovation. But when the case landed before Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the outcome was blunt.
Boasberg ruled that prosecutors had presented "essentially zero evidence" of a crime and said the subpoenas were unjustified. He cited criticism of Powell by Trump allies as evidence of potential bias in the investigation, Newsmax reported. The judge quashed both grand jury subpoenas, an unusual step that amounted to a sharp rebuke of the prosecution's basis for the probe.
Boasberg is no stranger to high-profile clashes with the executive branch. He has been at the center of multiple legally significant confrontations involving DOJ investigations and grand jury procedures.
Government prosecutors pushed back on the judge's characterization in their Monday filing, writing that "some presidents have a more acidic pen and pugnacious style than others." But they did not pursue the appeal. The filing instead asked the court to vacate the subpoena-quashing decision, a procedural move that would erase the ruling from the record and, as The Hill framed it, "leave the door open" for a future investigation.
Pirro announced late last month that DOJ was closing the probe and handing over any further review to the Federal Reserve's inspector general. Her statement at the time made clear the door was not fully shut.
"Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry."
But she added a pointed caveat:
"Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so."
That language matters. Pirro is not conceding that Powell did nothing wrong. She is saying the evidence did not support a criminal case, for now, and that the inspector general's findings could change the calculus. Whether the IG probe produces anything actionable remains an open question.
The broader DOJ under the current administration has shown no reluctance to pursue aggressive enforcement actions. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has launched a major fraud crackdown targeting what he described as a trillion dollars in taxpayer programs at risk.
The probe's closure carries political consequences beyond Powell himself. Kevin Warsh, Trump's nominee to succeed Powell as Fed chair, had seen his Senate confirmation path tangled up in the investigation. Sen. Thom Tillis said he would oppose Warsh until the probe was resolved, the Associated Press reported.
With the case now closed, that roadblock disappears. Warsh testified before the Senate Banking Committee that "the president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period." His confirmation can now proceed on its merits rather than being held hostage to an investigation that produced no charges.
The resolution also removes a persistent source of friction between the White House and the Federal Reserve at a moment when monetary policy decisions carry enormous weight. Trump had publicly pressured Powell over interest rate decisions, and the investigation, whatever its original intent, became politically intertwined with that pressure campaign.
The current DOJ leadership has been navigating a series of legally and politically complex fronts, from the weaponization working group to enforcement actions that have drawn sharp judicial scrutiny.
Several questions hang over the probe's conclusion. The two subpoenas at the heart of the case, what exactly they sought, and from whom, remain unclear from public reporting. The specifics of the cost overruns, and whether anyone at the Fed bears responsibility for what appears to be at minimum a $600 million budget gap, have not been publicly resolved.
The Fed inspector general's review is the last institutional mechanism that could produce accountability. But IG investigations operate on a different timeline and carry different tools than criminal probes. They can recommend administrative action or refer matters back for prosecution, but they lack the compulsory power of a grand jury.
Pirro's request to vacate the court's ruling is itself telling. If DOJ simply wanted to walk away, it could have dropped the matter entirely. By asking the court to erase its decision, prosecutors are trying to ensure that Boasberg's "essentially zero evidence" finding does not become a permanent precedent that constrains future investigations. The court has not yet ruled on that request.
The judiciary has been an active check on executive branch legal maneuvers across multiple fronts this term, with high-stakes cases still pending at the Supreme Court level.
A $2.5 billion renovation project with hundreds of millions in unexplained cost overruns deserved scrutiny. That much is not in dispute. But a criminal investigation requires evidence of a crime, and by the court's assessment, prosecutors never came close to establishing one.
The probe's collapse raises a fair question about whether it was properly predicated in the first place, or whether it became a tool of political leverage that outlived its usefulness. Pirro's decision to close the case and hand off to the inspector general was the right call once the evidence failed to materialize. The Monday filing simply formalizes what was already clear.
Taxpayers still deserve an answer about where those hundreds of millions went. The difference is that the answer will now come, if it comes at all, from an inspector general's audit, not a grand jury. Whether that's enough depends entirely on whether anyone at the Fed is willing to account for the money.