The director of the US Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), William J. Pulte, has asked Congress to investigate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell “immediately,” calling his Senate testimony denying lavish upgrades “deceptive,” and enough for his removal.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing last Wednesday, Powell defended the US Central Bank’s Washington headquarters renovation project that cost a reported $2.5 billion and included a number of lavish upgrades.
He called media reports on the upgrades “misleading and inaccurate” and claimed there are “no VIP dining rooms, no marble, no special elevators, no water features, and no rooftop gardens.”
Read more: Jerome Powell defies Trump, keeps crypto restrictions at Fed
His reaction prompted a response from Pulte, who asked Congress “to investigate Chairman Jerome Powell, his political bias, and his deceptive Senate testimony, which is enough to be removed ‘for cause.’”
The statements noted Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis and how she called Powell’s testimony “inaccurate” and typical of his so-called “mismanagement and ‘don’t bother me’ attitude.”
During the hearings, Donald Trump has been pressuring Powell to lower interest rates, even resorting to handwritten letters. Powell said this week that the US central bank might have lowered rates this year had the Trump administration not introduced high tariffs.
Lummis has previously criticized the Federal Reserve, claiming that its delay in making a decision on Wyoming’s Special Purpose Depository Institutions Federal Reserve master accounts was illegal.
She’s also demanded documents from the Federal Reserve that are related to the so-called Operation Chokepoint 2.0.
The FHFA has recently called for changes that would make mortgage buyers consider crypto in their risk assessments of would-be homeowners.
