Pirro drops appeal in Fed subpoena fight as probe is closed
Pirro abandoned her appeal after the Justice Department closed its Fed probe, ending a clash over subpoenas a judge said were meant to pressure Jerome Powell.
Jeanine Pirro’s office has dropped the planned appeal in its fight with the Federal Reserve, instead asking a federal judge to vacate the earlier subpoena ruling as “moot” after the Justice Department closed the investigation. The retreat ends, for now, a high-stakes attempt to pry into the Fed’s internal records and Jerome Powell’s testimony, a case that had raised alarms about whether criminal process was being used to influence monetary policy.
The subpoenas were issued in January as part of a criminal probe into the central bank’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation, including whether Powell misled Congress in June 2025 about the project’s cost overruns and amenities. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the subpoenas in March and again on April 3, saying the government had produced essentially no evidence of a crime and that the record pointed to an improper effort to pressure Powell over interest-rate policy. Boasberg said there was “abundant evidence” the subpoenas were intended to harass Powell or force him to yield.
Pirro had initially blasted Boasberg’s ruling as the work of an “activist judge” and said she would appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. But on Monday, she told the court that the issue no longer needed to be litigated because the Justice Department had shut down the probe into the Fed’s cost overruns and Powell’s testimony. That move leaves intact the broader message from the case: subpoenas aimed at a central bank cannot be justified by vague suspicions, especially when a judge sees them as tied to policy disputes rather than evidence of a crime.
The fight carried immediate political consequences because it became entangled with President Donald Trump’s effort to replace Powell with Kevin Warsh when Powell’s term as Fed chair ends on May 15, 2026. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said he would block Fed nominees while the investigation remained open, calling it weak and politically motivated. With the probe now closed, that roadblock has been removed, though the episode has sharpened the debate over the limits of prosecutorial power when it collides with the Federal Reserve’s independence. The Federal Reserve declined to comment, and the White House did not immediately respond.
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