Instant Reaction: Judge Rejects Subpoenas of Fed in Powell Case, DOJ to Appeal 

0:03Jeanine Pirro:Every small business owner has that one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business, and on Season 3 of The Unshakeables, my co-host Kathleen Griffith and I are bringing you more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible. We're really proud to share that The Unshakeables is nominated for Best Branded Podcast at the 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards. Listen to The Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com slash podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Copyright 2026, JPMorgan Chase and Company. Bloomberg Audio Studios.

0:44James Boasberg:Podcasts. Radio. News. This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg.

0:52Jeanine Pirro:Instant reaction and analysis from our 3 ,000 journalists and analysts around the world. U.S.

1:00James Boasberg:Attorney for Washington, D.C., Janine Pirro, vowed to continue her investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell after a judge earlier rejected subpoenas issued to the central bank threatening to delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Powell's successor. She spoke from her office in D.C. Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve. This is wrong, and it is without legal authority.

1:32Jeanine Pirro:That's U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Janine Pirro. We're joined by June Grasso, Bloomberg Legal Analyst and host of Bloomberg Law, weeknights at 6 and 10 p.m. on Bloomberg Radio. Michael McKee is with us, too. He's Bloomberg TV and Radio International Economics and Policy correspondent. June, you brought a printout. This is the full opinion. What have you found?

1:51James Boasberg:Let me first read you, if I may, the first few lines. Jerome Too Late Powell has done it again. It's too late. And actually, he's too angry, stupid, and too political to have the job of Fed chair. He's costing our country trillions of dollars.

2:04Jeanine Pirro:It sounds like a true social post.

2:05James Boasberg:The judge started with a page and a half of social posts by President Trump. So all legal rulings are like that, right? I've never seen one like this because usually they don't even give a preface. He just went right into it. And, you know, the thing is that he said there's no evidence that Powell committed any crimes. They've presented no evidence. On the other side, there's a mountain of evidence that this is about retribution against Powell by Trump. And that's why Judge Boesberg put that out there. So political. Can we read retribution as political or no? Yes, yes, I definitely think so. And you heard Jeanine Pirro talk about how there's no evidence and there's no this is against the rules and all that stuff.

2:43James Boasberg:Well, you know, I'll just read from Rule 17 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which prohibits subpoenas that are unreasonable or oppressive. So the judge found that this was unreasonable and probably oppressive. So, you know, this is a judge that's well known. He's the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit.

3:02Jeanine Pirro:Judge Boasberg you're talking about.

3:03James Boasberg:He's very well respected, but you also might know he came into prominence because he's the judge who told the Trump administration to turn the planes around when they were flying Venezuelans to El Salvador. Okay. Well, we heard from our Elliot Stein of Bloomberg Intelligence, right, who said that this is a judge who's been kind of a thorn in the side of the Trump administration. They went after him for ethics violations and failed. So it was about a conference, a private statement that he made at a conference of judges, and they actually tried to pursue ethics complaint against him, and that was dismissed.

3:36Jeanine Pirro:So he was appointed in 2011 by President Obama, but earlier he was appointed to the Superior Court of D.C. by President George W. Bush. So he's had support from—and, you know, we're talking about this because these days there's a lot of—he was called an activist judge by Jeanine Pirro.

3:52James Boasberg:Not only that, by Pam Bondi months and months ago, I have I can, you know, find the quotes of her calling him and actually calling out Judge Boesberg and a few other judges as activist judges. So, I mean, that's a term that is used a lot by people in this administration. And, you know, you really can't put any credit on that because they call dyed in the wool Republican judges appointed by Ronald Reagan activists. Mike, I want you to come in. You're going to stick around a little bit later and also talk with our Tim O 'Brien about all of this. But I mean, is Jay Powell sitting there being like Yahoo or it's not over yet?

4:25James Boasberg:So he's, you know, because remember, he made that video after the subpoenas and was was unheard of to see a Fed chair come out and do something like that.

4:35Jeanine Pirro:Well, he's not rejoicing. I'm sure he's happy with the ruling. And the Fed had always taken the position there was no crime here. And they pointed to the senators who all said there was no crime here, which Judge Bosberg notes in his decision. And the administration has just continued to pursue this. So the Fed has had to sit back. This was sort of the Fed's longer shot strategy to try to get the subpoenas quashed. It's sort of the first line of defense, and they won on that. So now they don't even have to go farther unless she wins her appeal. But Powell's going to have to wait and see what happens with the appeal.

5:17Jeanine Pirro:and if then she finds some other way to try to indict him for something because they're trying to get him. It's very interesting in Judge Bosberg's opinion, he paraphrases a man for all seasons. When he compares, he lays out all these tweets that the president put out and he said, this basically comes down to, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? And Jeanine Pirro is the person who's trying to do that.

5:46James Boasberg:So go back, June, then, to the legal case. What's next? What does she have to do to get these appeals? First of all, she said that this gives him blanket immunity. That's not the case. First of all, she's going to appeal. And also, they're asking for a reconsideration because she said the judge had some dates wrong. Does that matter legally? Well, it may not matter legally based on, we have to look at the context of it. But, you know, will he reconsider? Maybe he'll reconsider. But I doubt that he's going to come out with a different opinion. So that's that's next is the is the appeal. And she can also she can also find, as Mike said, other information to move her case forward.

6:29James Boasberg:And the other thing is she, and particularly the D.C. Attorney's Office, has had a lot of trouble getting grand juries to indict people in cases and having grand juries reject cases that are, you know, overcharged. This case, I have to say, getting a criminal case based on statements that are mistaken, that is a very tough case to make. I mean, perjury cases are just really difficult to make. This is something the president kind of knows about, doesn't he?

6:57Jeanine Pirro:Well, this was not about cost overruns.

6:59James Boasberg:Oh, okay.

6:59Jeanine Pirro:This was about his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee when he was asked about the cost overruns. And what he said was sort of evasive because apparently he didn't have all the information right in front of him. But there was no lie in it. And Tim Scott, the chairman of the Banking Committee, said he didn't lie to us. The rest of the Banking Committee said he didn't lie to us. But that's what Pirro is trying to build a case on.

7:26James Boasberg:Which is what she highlighted also in the press conference today.

7:29Jeanine Pirro:right in terms of the cost well yeah it all revolves around the cost okay but he didn't she hasn't tried to charge him with anything in relation to the cost it's a fishing expedition if they got some paperwork from the fed if the subpoenas had gone forward that showed he did

7:47James Boasberg:something wrong but that's fishing expeditions well i was going to say that um if you remember the barry bonds case years and years and years ago where they were trying to baseball player yes They were trying to get him perjury based on statements he made to a grand jury. And if you read it, he just went around and around. He didn't lie specifically. Seven years of pretrial and things like that. He finally got convicted, and then it was overturned on appeal. I mean, these are not easy cases to make. And by the time it goes through, Jeanine Pirro will probably be out of the D.C. office.

8:22Jeanine Pirro:Kevin Lorsch has to wait seven years. Well, that's what. What? We got it. Our conversation is going to continue, June. It is going to continue. You have work to do. We have to say goodbye to you. June Grosso with Bloomberg Legal Annas. She's host of Bloomberg Law. Weeknights at 6 and 10 on Bloomberg Radio. Mike McKee, you're not so lucky. You're sticking with us.

8:39James Boasberg:And we're going to bring our Tim O 'Brien into the studio as well and also talk with him about all of this. But Mike, one of the things... Can we go? Can we go? We're going to go. Mike, one of the things I think about is what if there is kind of the back and forth still going and Kevin Warsh, his nomination isn't confirmed. What happens? Does Jay Powell stay in the job? Like, how does this?

9:03Jeanine Pirro:Well, Powell can stay as a governor until January of 2028, because that's when his governor's term ends. He would not be chairman of the Board of Governors anymore after May 15th. But the Open Market Committee that makes the interest rate decisions elects its own chair every year. And this year, the Open Market Committee elected him to be chair for the entire year. The last time they elected somebody in this situation, they said until a successor is confirmed. So they don't have to do anything. He just stays as chair until and unless he either resigns or Warsh comes in and they decide to replace Powell.

9:42Jeanine Pirro:This is something we're going to talk about with Tim O 'Brien, too, in just a minute. But, Mike, it seems like this could have been such an easy opportunity to fast track Kevin Warsh to becoming the next Fed chair. Had Janine Pirro accepted the decision from this judge and said, OK, the judge spoke. We're done. That's it. And we're not going to appeal this. But now Tom Tillis says as long as this process continues, he will not allow Kevin Warsh to move from committee to get confirmed. Well, and if this is going to continue through the appeals process, it's going to continue for months because that's the way the legal system works.

10:22Jeanine Pirro:So Warsh is not going to be confirmed anytime soon. I suppose it makes Stephen Myron happy because he stays in the seat. But you have to shake your head. You have to wonder and say, what were they thinking? But we're always saying that these days. Let's bring in Tim O 'Brien. He's Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor. He's back here in our studio. Tim, we wanted you on because you have a column earlier that we spoke about, about the president and plans and planning for this. And I think this is kind of a perfect opportunity to talk about what was the plan here? Is there a plan? Is there a plan here?

10:55Jeanine Pirro:And I think if we know what my answer is going to be. Yeah, I know what your answer is going to be. But this seems to be, like we were saying, not necessarily prudent to get the next Fed chair in position for President Trump. Yeah, again, you know, planning matters. It matters when you plan a party. It matters when you plan a home renovation. It matters when you plan how to run a business, and it certainly matters when you plan how to run the federal government in its myriad facets and all the important things it does. So, of course, the orchestration of how you get a Fed nominee on track, how you get a Fed nominee approved, and how you then get them seated really matters.

11:34Jeanine Pirro:And a lot of this, the thing that's going on with Lisa Cook, it is theatrics. the issue being looked into other members of the Trump administration have wrestled with this including the treasury secretary who wasn't singled out for an investigation and it would be just wise for them to let go of it and smooth the waters and get worse right in there as Michael was saying and the fact that they're not suggests a number of things that they actually don't have a blueprint for how to go about this. They're not communicating well with each other. It's not clear to me how well the president's team communicated with Pirro before she got in front of a microphone to talk about this, how much of it's informed by peak rather than strategy, et cetera, et cetera.

12:24Jeanine Pirro:And that is a common feature of how the Trump administration rolls.

12:29James Boasberg:I want to ask you, though, Tim, like part of us sometimes wonders, is this chaotic approach and, And, you know, President Trump's ability or, you know, goal of putting so much out there to kind of confuse us is a plan and is a strategy. You know, the flood the zone kind of idea. How much of that do you should we think that this is part of what he wants to do? And we're not talking about some oil prices or the Epstein files.

12:56Jeanine Pirro:Or Epstein files.

12:56James Boasberg:We talk about this all the time. There are things we're not talking about as a result.

12:59Jeanine Pirro:Well, so I think that this is an attempt to impose a rational structure on what's an inherently irrational process, which is that Trump is a chaotic force of nature. This is who he's been forever. He hasn't really had to suffer the consequences of chaos in his own life or his own career. He's come very close a few times. He flirted with personal bankruptcy in the early 1990s. He's been through a number of marriages. He was in the White House, then out of the White House. Now he's back in again. So, you know, this is present. But I think it's important to discern strategy from chaos and discern strategy from goals.

13:41Jeanine Pirro:You know, I think Trump clearly has goals. It's usually self-aggrandizement or self-preservation. Almost everything that he aspires to is in one of those silos. But that's not having a strategy. Strategies require patience. You have to think long term. You have to build a team around you that can help you execute your vision. That's strategy. All the rest of it is throwing mud up against a wall to see what sticks.

14:06James Boasberg:Who does have strategy is Jay Powell. And I keep thinking, Mike, about next week and the Fed meeting. And we'll know where I'm sure there will be posts on social media that we will get from whether it's the White House or the administration or what have you. But I just think about where Jay Powell is going to be on Wednesday, no matter what is kind of swirling around him. And when it comes to this specifically, we know he'll be asked.

14:25Jeanine Pirro:Yeah, the Fed has to make a decision. And Powell, I'm sure, when asked about it, will say something along the lines of, well, we agree with the court. And that's all I'm going to say because it's under appeal. I'm not going to talk about it anymore. And then we're going to ask him, are you going to stick around as governor when your term as chair ends? And he will say, I haven't thought about that. I'm not giving that any thought right now. I'm just focused on the job in front of me, which will, in a way, get easier because of the president, because the war has pushed up oil prices and is threatening the economy.

15:00Jeanine Pirro:The Fed is now going to be sitting back and doing nothing. Even if Kevin Walsh were confirmed immediately, he wouldn't be cutting rates under these circumstances. Would Stephen Myron? No, I don't think so. Okay. I mean, we talked to Stephen the week the war started, and he said, I just don't know enough right now, so I'm still on my position. But if you thought that inflation was going to rise significantly, then cutting rates would not be the thing you'd want to do. Myron's argument would be, well, if the economy is going to slow, we're going to get higher unemployment, then that is something you might cut rates for.