The Department of Justice does not plan to reopen its criminal probe into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell regarding a multi-billion-dollar renovation of one of the Fed’s complexes, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed Monday. The decision matters because it closes one avenue of legal exposure for Powell while leaving open a separate accountability debate over the Fed’s management of the Marriner S. Eccles Building and the adjacent 1951 Constitution Avenue Building. Attorney General Todd Blanche first told Bloomberg on Friday that the DOJ wouldn’t reopen the investigation, but he also said, “there's a big difference between whether he did anything wrong and whether he should be held accountable and whether there's any criminal conduct.”
The material facts center on the Office of the Inspector General’s findings and the DOJ’s procedural history. The OIG said last week that it found mismanagement, but neither criminality nor administrative misconduct, in its investigation into the Fed’s over-budget renovations. The DOJ opened its investigation in January but dropped it in April after a federal judge said there was “abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will.” Blanche said the OIG report “speaks for itself about what the board did and did not do,” and that “we should focus on that sort of accountability.”
The evidence is drawn from a single Banking Dive report that quotes Blanche, the DOJ spokesperson, the OIG findings, the federal judge’s language, and a September letter from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. Blanche said there is “more work to do to understand” how the project got to be so expensive, and that “we'll see what happens.” He also said, “It's pretty clear he did not act appropriately as far as oversight, and that's what the inspector general concluded … [but] not having any sort of oversight over the folks doing billion-dollar projects isn't necessarily a crime.” President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Blanche would “study” the OIG report, and in a Truth Social post demanded Powell resign “IMMEDIATELY!” or be sued “for either corruption or incompetence.”
For the Fed and markets, the DOJ decision reduces the immediate risk of a renewed criminal investigation into Powell, but it does not resolve the political pressure around the renovation. The Fed plans to have an independent auditor verify the accuracy and compliance of all renovation project awards to date, and it will set “clear internal controls and standards for budgeting, performance, and oversight for the future, so that no issues of this kind will be repeated,” according to Warsh’s September letter attached to the OIG report. That suggests the institutional response will focus on governance and audit reforms rather than criminal referrals. The distinction between mismanagement and criminal conduct is central: Blanche’s comments indicate the DOJ sees the OIG’s oversight findings as a basis for accountability, but not necessarily for prosecution.
The main limitation is that the dossier contains one secondary source read in full, so the analysis cannot independently verify the OIG report’s full scope, the renovation’s total cost, or the exact timeline of the DOJ’s January-to-April investigation beyond what Banking Dive reported. The DOJ spokesperson declined to comment further, and no additional primary documents are available in the factual boundary. What to watch next is whether Blanche’s “more work to do” language leads to any new administrative or congressional action, whether the independent auditor’s findings change the accountability picture, and whether Trump’s demand for Powell’s resignation or a lawsuit produces any formal legal filing.