A federal judge blocked the Justice Department’s move to subpoena Federal Reserve records, a significant setback in its inquiry into central bank chief Jerome H. Powell and his testimony about the Fed’s renovations of its headquarters.

Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in D.C. quashed a pair of subpoenas tied to the investigation and ordered the docket in the case unsealed after attorneys for the Fed and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office battled over the legality of the probe in a closed-door hearing this month.

The judge’s ruling, dated Wednesday and unsealed Friday, criticized the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate several of President Donald Trump’s perceived political foes since last year and said the Powell inquiry was the latest instance of weaponizing law enforcement for political ends.

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote in the opinion. “On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”.....

Tillis and several other Republicans on the Banking Committee — including the panel’s Republican chairman — have said they don’t believe Powell committed a crime in his June testimony, which briefly touched on the office renovations.

Link to tweet

.....In a readout of a previously unreported Jan. 29 meeting with Pirro, Powell’s personal attorney said the chair “would not leave the board when his term as chair expires if he was still under investigation.”

The pushback to the investigation was swift, broad and bipartisan, with several congressional Republicans agreeing that it was a mistake to pursue the Fed chair with trumped-up charges.

Late Friday, the case, such as it was, unraveled. MS NOW reported:

A federal judge has quashed the Justice Department’s subpoenas targeting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, according to a court filing unsealed Friday — a major blow to the Trump administration’s criminal investigation into the central bank’s leader.

In a remarkable decision, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that ‘a mountain of evidence’ suggested that ‘the Government served these subpoenas on the [Federal Reserve] Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.’ Boasberg added that federal prosecutors ‘produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime,’ calling the Trump administration’s case ‘so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.’

....Broadly speaking, there are a few elements to consider as the dust settles on the ruling and the White House weighs its future options.

First, the president really ought to be asking himself right now whether it was a smart move to tap a former Fox News host to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital. Jeanine Pirro’s failed effort against Powell was humiliating, but it coincided with a similarly humiliating effort to indict Democratic veterans in Congress who advised service members to follow the law, which coincided with a separate failed criminal investigation into Joe Biden.

In fact, Pirro’s office has lost so many closely watched cases with such regularity that it’s been challenging to keep up with them.

Second, in an unusual press conference following the apparent demise of her case against Powell, the Republican prosecutor made little effort to claim she had evidence of wrongdoing, but said she wanted to go after the Fed chair anyway, just in case some undetermined crimes might have been committed......

As the press conference started to wrap up, Pirro was asked about the frequency of federal grand juries rejecting her efforts. Her furious response offered fresh evidence that she’s ill-suited for the position she’s in.

Pirro: CUT IT OUT!!! I’ll tell you what’s historic! I'm willing to take a not guilty. I'm willing to take a not true bill. Because I'll take all the crimes and put them in

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2026-03-13T19:56:17.573Z

Finally, there’s the road ahead. Given the circumstances, there’s a silver lining for the White House to the rejection of the baseless case against Powell: The sooner this case goes away, the easier it will be for Senate Republicans to move forward with Kevin Warsh’s nomination to succeed Powell. All Pirro had to do was accept Friday’s outcome, scrap plans for an appeal and move on to other priorities.

The prosecutor instead signaled plans for the opposite path, which dovetailed with the president publishing a hysterical tirade to his social media platform, condemning Boasberg and accusing Powell of wrongdoing in the vaguest ways possible.

The most important part of Chief Judge James Boasberg’s ruling quashing Justice Department subpoenas served on the Federal Reserve was not simply that he blocked them.

It was that he refused to suspend common sense. He read the subpoenas against the public record that produced them. He took President Donald Trump at his word. That is what made the opinion so important.

Judge Boasberg did not begin with dry procedural throat-clearing. He began with Trump’s own attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the broader campaign of presidential and White House pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.

He quoted Trump calling Powell “TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed Chair.” He cited another post calling Powell “one of the dumbest, and most destructive, people in Government.” He noted Trump’s statement that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” and his threat that if the Fed did not cut rates, “I may have to force something.”....

Judge Boasberg wrote that there was “abundant evidence” that the dominant, if not sole, purpose of the subpoenas was to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the president or resign and make way for someone who would. On the other side of the scale, he said the government had offered “no evidence whatsoever” that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president. By the end of the opinion, that judgment hardened even further: The government had produced “essentially zero evidence” of criminality, and its stated justifications looked like “a convenient pretext” for another unstated purpose......

When a president has repeatedly identified the official he wants pressured or removed, made his desired outcome unmistakable and then his Justice Department shows up with a paper-thin theory aimed at that same target, a court does not have to pretend those events are unrelated. Judge Boasberg’s opinion suggested that at least some courts may be losing patience with that formalism.

What made the opinion important was not just that Judge Boasberg drew that inference here. It was that he did so openly, in a way that may signal a broader judicial willingness to read executive motive more realistically in politically saturated cases.

That is not judicial activism. It is common sense......

When a president has repeatedly identified the official he wants pressured or removed, made his desired outcome unmistakable and then his Justice Department shows up with a paper-thin theory aimed at that same target, a court does not have to pretend those events are unrelated. Judge Boasberg’s opinion suggested that at least some courts may be losing patience with that formalism.

What made the opinion important was not just that Judge Boasberg drew that inference here. It was that he did so openly, in a way that may signal a broader judicial willingness to read executive motive more realistically in politically saturated cases.

That is not judicial activism. It is common sense.