President Donald Trump mused about his own power recently when a reporter asked him what, if anything, could restrain his actions overseas. “There is one thing,” he replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Days later, the Trump administration attacked one of America’s most important and most delicate domestic institutions, making clear that the president’s limitless mindset applies equally at home. The Justice Department on Friday served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, indicating that federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation of Fed chief Jerome Powell. The investigation puts Powell at the mercy of prosecutors who are accountable to Trump, and it could curb his ability to steer monetary policy independently.
The probe ostensibly investigates Powell’s statements to Congress last year about renovations of Fed buildings. Those renovations ran over budget, with the cost growing from about $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion. That kind of ballooning in construction costs is surely familiar to a real estate developer like Trump, yet Trump threatened last summer to fire Powell over the renovations, until White House advisers urged him to back down. The reemergence of the issue suggests that Trump wasn’t swayed for long, and that he had bigger reasons to target Powell than supposedly misspent construction money.
