\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said he expected there was \u201cnothing to see here\u201d as the US Department of Justice pursues its criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has faced a chorus of criticism in recent days after it emerged that the justice department had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas, in a significant escalation of its extraordinary attack on the US central bank\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n
Allies of Trump spent months last year accusing the Fed of mishandling the multibillion-dollar renovations of its historic headquarters in Washington. Trump had repeatedly threatened legal action.<\/p>\n
The justice department is now investigating the project, and whether Powell \u2013 who accused the administration of targeting him because the Fed has defied Trump\u2019s repeated demands for drastic interest rate cuts \u2013 lied to Congress about its scope during testimony last summer.<\/p>\n
Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia, has insisted her office takes decisions \u201cbased on the merits\u201d. Trump claimed he did not know about the investigation before it was reported.<\/p>\n
Hassett, chair of Trump\u2019s national economic council \u2013 and one of the US president\u2019s top candidates to replace Powell as Fed chair, when his term expires in May \u2013 suggested on Friday morning that he believed Powell had told the truth about the renovation.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the Fox Business Network, Hassett said that he wished the Fed had been \u201cmore transparent\u201d when it comes to Powell\u2019s congressional testimony about the ongoing renovations to the central bank that are at the heart of the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll corners of government \u2013 the Fed, the White House, everything \u2013 we have a responsibility to the American people to be transparent,\u201d said Hassett. \u201cAnd I think that, if I were Fed chair, that I would insist on transparency. I probably would\u2019ve answered the questions right away.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the bottom line is, I expect \u2013 Jay\u2019s a good man \u2013 I expect that there\u2019s nothing to see here, that the cost overruns were related to things like asbestos, as he says. But I sure wish that they had been more transparent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every living former Fed chair condemned the investigation this week, warning that similar prosecutorial attacks in other countries had led to \u201chighly negative consequences\u201d for the cost of living \u2013 and argued they had \u201cno place\u201d in the US. Central banks around the world also issued a rare joint statement offering \u201cfull solidarity\u201d to Powell.<\/p>\n
Hassett said that, if offered the job as Fed chair, he would take the job with a commitment to \u201cindependence and transparency\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s something the Fed could have done better in the past,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Later on Friday morning, at a roundtable event on rural healthcare at the White House, Trump praised Hassett\u2019s earlier performance on cable news. \u201cYou were fantastic in television today,\u201d Trump said, adding that he\u2019s reluctant to let Hassett leave his role at the national economic council.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually want to keep you where you are if you want to know the truth,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou\u2019ve done incredible. We don\u2019t want to lose him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump\u2019s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said he expected there was \u201cnothing to see here\u201d as the US Department of Justice pursues its criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair. The Trump administration has faced a chorus of criticism in recent days after it emerged that the justice department had served the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,2271,200,1271,18037,4437,6226,2282,81,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-41963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-adviser","10":"tag-department","11":"tag-economic","12":"tag-expects","13":"tag-fed","14":"tag-investigates","15":"tag-justice","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}