On
Friday,
Jeanine
Pirro,
the
improbable
US
Attorney
for
DC,
lost
her
shit
on
live
television.
Independence?
Schmindependence!
Trump
has
brayed
for
Chairman
Powell’s
head
for
over
to
a
year
now.
He
wants
interest
rates
at
zero
and
seems
to
think
it’s
his
rightful
due
for
“saving”
the
economy.
This
is
economically
illiterate
—
zero
interest
rates
are
a
tool
to
stimulate
an
economy
that
is
contracting
—
although
his
Iran
misadventures
may
wind
up
changing
the
math.
At
any
rate,
Trump
seems
to
have
grasped
that
trying
to
fire
Powell
would
be
more
trouble
than
it’s
worth,
both
politically
and
legally.
But
that
hasn’t
stopped
Trump’s
minions
from
targeting
Powell
in
an
effort
to
gin
up
justification
to
terminate
the
chair
“for
cause.”
Trump’s
chief
instigator
is
Bill
Pulte,
director
of
the
Federal
Housing
Finance
Agency
and
the
chairman
of
Fannie
Mae
and
Freddie
Mac,
who
spends
his
days
spelunking
through
confidential
financial
documents
looking
for
dirt
on
Trump’s
enemies.
He’s
the
one
who
came
up
with
the
allegation
that
Federal
Reserve
Board
Member
Lisa
Cook
had
lied
on
a
mortgage
application,
justifying
her
termination
“for
cause”
and
freeing
up
Trump
to
install
someone
more
pliant.
With
Powell,
Pulte
seems
to
have
settled
on
cost
overruns
in
the
renovation
of
the
Federal
Reserve
buildings
as
a
convenient
excuse.
Pulte’s
tweet
soon
became
the
official
Trumpland
line,
and
White
House
officials,
including
Deputy
Chief
of
Staff
James
Blair,
posted
memes
of
Powell
as
Marie
Antoinette
—
which
does
double-duty
as
homophobia,
too.
In
DC,
Pirro
answered
Pulte’s
call.
She
served
grand
jury
subpoenas
on
the
Fed
in
January
demanding
information
about
the
renovation
and
Powell’s
testimony
to
Congress.
Powell
immediately
took
to
the
airwaves
to
denounce
this
blatant
attack
on
the
independence
of
the
Federal
Reserve.
He
also
moved
to
quash
the
subpoenas
in
the
US
District
Court
for
the
District
of
Columbia.
The
case
landed
on
the
docket
of
Chief
Justice
James
Boasberg,
himself
the
target
of
a
judicial
ethics
complaint,
an
impeachment
push,
and
an
unending
stream
of
vitriol
from
the
Trump
administration.
Last
Wednesday,
Judge
Boasberg
granted
Powell’s
motions
to
quash,
unsealing
much
of
it
on
the
public
docket
Friday.
“Too
late?”
Or
right
on
time?
Judge
Boasberg
began
his
order
by
quoting
a
few
of
Trump’s
dozens
of
attacks
on
Powell.
“Being
perceived
as
the
President’s
adversary
has
become
risky
in
recent
years,”
he
observed
wryly.
“In
his
second
term,
Trump
has
urged
the
Department
of
Justice
to
prosecute
such
people,
and
the
Department’s
prosecutors
have
listened.”
The
judge
noted
that,
after
Trump
called
to
prosecute
members
of
Congress
for
reminding
active
duty
service
members
of
their
duty
to
refuse
unlawful
orders,
Pirro’s
office
tried
to
indict
them.
He
omitted
to
mention
that
zero
grand
jurors
voted
to
charge
the
legislators.
Judge
Boasberg
says
that
he
invited
the
US
Attorney’s
Office
to
submit
evidence
ex
parte
that
there
is
any
reason
at
all
to
suspect
that
Powell
committed
a
crime.
The
government
declined,
other
than
to
gesture
vaguely
toward
cost
overruns
in
the
Fed
renovation
and
the
fact
that
Powell’s
testified
before
the
Senate
Banking
Committee.
“The
Government
might
as
well
investigate
him
for
mail
fraud
because
someone
once
saw
him
send
a
letter,”
he
judge
scoffed.
And
so,
the
subpoenas
were
quashed.
Take
the
L,
Ma’am
This
would
be
an
ideal
opportunity
for
the
Trump
administration
to
declare
victory
and
go
home.
Powell’s
term
as
Fed
Chair
is
up
in
May,
although
his
tenure
on
the
Board
of
Governors
extends
through
2027.
It’s
traditional
for
the
Fed
Chair
to
resign
at
the
end
of
his
term,
leaving
space
for
the
president
to
leave
his
stamp
on
the
Board
with
his
own
nominee.
But
Powell
has
refused
to
say
whether
he’ll
depart,
and
the
DOJ
claims
in
its
opposition
that
Powell
refused
to
resign
while
this
investigation
was
pending.
“By
making
this
peculiar
suggestion,
the
Board
morphed
the
Subpoenas
into
the
exact
thing
about
which
they
complain
—
a
mechanism
by
which
Chair
Powell
could
be
removed,”
the
prosecutors
whined.
I
believe
this
is
meant
to
suggest
that,
by
offering
to
leave
if
the
case
goes
away,
Powell
himself
is
politicizing
the
prosecution.
But
if
Pirro’s
office
could
simply
STFU
up
for
10
minutes,
she
could
solve
a
bunch
of
the
president’s
political
issues.
Specifically,
Senator
Thom
Tillis,
a
Republican
on
the
Senate
Banking
Committee,
was
so
incensed
by
Pirro’s
attack
on
Powell
that
he
vowed
to
block
any
confirmation
to
the
Fed
until
it
resolves.
That
includes
Kevin
Warsh,
Trump’s
pick
to
replace
Powell
as
chair.
On
Friday,
Senator
Tillis
encouraged
the
Trump
administration
to
just
take
the
off-ramp.
“This
ruling
confirms
just
how
weak
and
frivolous
the
criminal
investigation
of
Chairman
Powell
is
and
it
is
nothing
more
than
a
failed
attack
on
Fed
independence,”
Sen.
Tillis
said.
“We
all
know
how
this
is
going
to
end
and
the
D.C.
U.S.
Attorney’s
Office
should
save
itself
further
embarrassment
and
move
on.
Appealing
the
ruling
will
only
delay
the
confirmation
of
Kevin
Warsh
as
the
next
Fed
Chair.”
But
Jeanine
Pirro
didn’t
get
where
she
is
in
this
life
by
making
rational
choices.
After
foamily
fulminating
about
her
own
track
record
prosecuting
child
sex
crimes,
she
promised
to
appeal.
“By
inserting
himself
and
preventing
the
grand
jury
from
even
obtaining,
let
alone
hearing
evidence,
he
has
neutered
the
ability
of
the
grand
jury
to
investigate
crime,”
she
ranted.
“As
a
result,
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.”
These
two
things
are
the
same
Pirro’s
hissy
fit
comes
on
the
heels
of
the
revelation
that
her
predecessor
is
under
investigation
by
the
DC
bar.
Ed
Martin
publicly
harassed
the
Georgetown
University
Law
Center
for
its
First
Amendment
protected
speech,
and
then,
when
called
out
for
it,
privately
spammed
the
District
of
Columbia
Court
of
Appeals
with
ex
parte
communications
demanding
that
the
judges
rein
in
the
DC
Bar.
Martin
enjoys
the
dubious
distinction
of
being
one
of
the
only
Trump
nominees
rejected
by
the
Senate.
This,
too,
was
thanks
to
Tillis,
who
said
he
wasn’t
going
to
put
a
January
6
protester
in
charge
of
the
US
Attorneys
Office
in
DC.
Martin
was
then
folded
into
the
Justice
Department
and
given
several
titles
to
soothe
his
wounded
ego.
Eventually,
he
appears
to
have
worn
out
his
welcome
and
gotten
turfed
out
after
sharing
confidential
grand
jury
materials
with
some
rando
on
Twitter.
But
it’s
worth
asking
what
would
be
different
at
the
US
Attorneys
Office
in
DC
if
Tillis
had
knuckled
under
and
voted
for
Martin.
Because,
for
all
Pirro’s
histrionics
about
having
“cleaned
up
this
city,”
violent
crime
in
DC
has
declined
at
roughly
the
same
rate
as
every
other
major
city,
including
neighboring
Baltimore.
Despite
having
an
actual
resume
as
a
prosecutor,
Pirro’s
tenure
has
been
marked
by
an
embarrassing
string
of
defeats.
She
routinely
gets
no-billed
by
grand
juries
and
laughed
out
of
court
by
petit
jurors.
Her
political
prosecutions
have
come
to
naught.
And
on
Friday,
even
as
she
was
inveighing
against
Judge
Boasberg,
her
office
was
abandoning
the
prosecution
of
veteran
Jay
Carey
for
burning
a
flag
in
Lafayette
Park
to
protest
Trump’s
executive
order
purporting
to
ban
it.
That
case
was
also
presided
over
by
Judge
Boasberg,
who
refused
to
dismiss
Carey’s
case
on
statutory
grounds,
but
did
grant
him
discovery
on
the
question
of
vindictive
prosecution.
Rather
than
explain
herself,
Pirro
dropped
the
case.
Ed
Martin
couldn’t
have
done
better!
But
then
again,
he
probably
couldn’t
have
done
worse,
either.
Liz
Dye produces
the
Law
and
Chaos Substack and podcast. You
can
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clicking
the
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