Senate Democrats move to stall Trump’s ‘absurd’ bid to install new Fed chair

Democrats have moved to stall Donald Trump’s effort to exert greater control over the US Federal Reserve, condemning the president’s “absurd” bid to install a new leader of the central bank while it is targeted with criminal investigations.

Democratic lawmakers on the Senate banking committee urged its Republican leadership on Thursday to postpone the planned confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh, the financial executive and former Fed governor Trump has nominated to replace Jerome Powell as Fed chair.

In a letter to banking committee chair Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, the 11 Democrats called for a hearing currently scheduled for Tuesday to be delayed until investigations into Powell and Lisa Cook, a Fed governor, are closed.

Powell – whom the president has frequently and publicly chastised over his refusal to dramatically lower interest rates – is facing a criminal investigation into the renovations of the central bank’s headquarters, which he dismissed as a “pretext” tied to the Fed’s refusal to bow to Trump’s demands.

The Trump administration also tried to fire Cook, an appointee of Joe Biden, for alleged mortgage fraud. Cook has denied wrongdoing, and the president’s attempt to fire her has made its way to the US supreme court, where justices appeared skeptical of the case for terminating Cook.

The Democratic senators wrote in their letter to Scott: “It would be absurd on its face to allow President Trump to handpick the next chair of the Federal Reserve as his Department of Justice actively pursues criminal investigations of not one, but two sitting members of the Federal Reserve board. It would also be inappropriate to move forward with Mr Warsh’s nomination as the president publicly threatens the federal judge who found the DoJ’s probe to lack merit.”