President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell if Powell does not leave when his term expires next month, and that a federal probe into the Fed's ballooning headquarters renovation will continue regardless. The remarks, made during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, mark the sharpest escalation yet in a standoff that now involves a criminal referral, a stalled Senate confirmation, and a multibillion-dollar construction project that the Daily Caller reported has blown past its budget by roughly 25 percent.
Powell's chairmanship ends May 15. But his seat on the Federal Reserve Board does not expire until January 31, 2028, and Powell declared in March that he has "no intention" to leave the central bank while the renovation investigation hangs over him. When Bartiromo pressed Trump on that declaration, the president did not hesitate.
"Well then I'll have to fire him, OK, if he's not leaving on time. I've held back firing him. I've wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial, you know. I want to be uncontroversial."
He then added flatly: "But he will be fired."
The backdrop to this confrontation is not monetary policy or interest rates. It is a construction project. The Federal Reserve's Washington headquarters renovation has become one of the more startling examples of government cost overruns in recent memory. Trump said he presented Powell with documents during a July 24 tour of the site, alongside Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, showing the project cost had ballooned to $3.1 billion.
Trump, who built his career in real estate before entering politics, drew a direct comparison to his own construction record.
"It's more than a criminal probe. It's a criminal probe, I guess, but it's also a probe of incompetence. How do you take a little building? I built a hotel for $201 million that's bigger than that building down the road, it's a little while ago, 7 years ago, 8 years ago, I built the Trump Hotel, which I sold to Waldorf Astoria, a good deal, I built it like around $200 million in construction."
He went further, saying the project may never reach completion.
"They're gonna spend maybe $4 billion and you know what? I'm not sure the thing's ever gonna open, you know, I do that stuff very well. I went past the site the other day. I was driving past, they said take me past the Federal Reserve building. It took me past. There's very little work done inside."
The president also relayed remarks he attributed to Kevin Warsh, his nominee to replace Powell as chairman. Trump said Warsh told him the original building had been gutted, and that some of Washington's finest interior spaces were destroyed in the process.
"He said the saddest part of it is they ripped down the most beautiful building of them all. They ripped it down. He said they had boardrooms and various rooms in that building that were the most beautiful in Washington and they ripped it down. What they've done to that, so it is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetent and we have to show the incompetence of that."
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida referred Powell to the Justice Department in July, alleging he lied to the Senate Banking Committee about the renovations during testimony in June. That referral remains active, and Trump said Wednesday the investigation would continue even if Powell leaves the agency.
The investigation has taken on a life of its own. AP News reported that federal prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office made an unannounced visit to the Fed headquarters construction site as part of the probe into the $2.5 billion renovation. That visit signals the administration is not treating this as a paper exercise.
Yet the legal picture is not clean. Breitbart noted that a top deputy in the investigation previously conceded prosecutors had found no evidence of a crime. That admission has not stopped the probe, but it has complicated the politics around it, particularly on Capitol Hill.
The question of whether a sitting president can fire a Federal Reserve chair is itself a live legal dispute. The Supreme Court is set to review Trump's authority over the Federal Reserve, a case that could reshape the boundaries of executive power over independent agencies for a generation.
Even if Trump forces Powell out, replacing him will not be simple. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has publicly vowed to block Kevin Warsh's confirmation until the Justice Department drops its investigation into Powell. The Washington Examiner reported that Tillis has effectively stalled the succession process, leaving Trump's preferred replacement in limbo.
Tillis told reporters bluntly: "There really is no path" to confirming Warsh while the investigation continues. His argument, that there is no evidence Powell committed a crime, puts him directly at odds with the White House. It is a rare case of a Republican senator openly defying the president on a signature personnel move.
That intraparty clash over the Fed nomination has drawn attention precisely because it threatens to leave the most powerful central bank in the world without clear leadership at a precarious moment for the economy.
Powell, for his part, has said he could continue serving as acting chair beyond May 15 if no successor has been confirmed. That prospect is exactly what Trump appears determined to prevent.
The standoff raises questions that go well beyond one man's job title. The Federal Reserve's independence from the White House has been a bedrock assumption of American financial governance for decades. Critics of Trump's approach argue that firing a Fed chair would shatter market confidence. Supporters counter that no institution, especially one spending billions of taxpayer-adjacent dollars on a construction project, should be above accountability.
The broader pattern of legal battles over executive authority has played out across multiple fronts. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has expressed concern about the scope of presidential power over the Fed, suggesting even some conservative jurists see the issue as genuinely unsettled.
Meanwhile, the Fed's own personnel picture continues to shift. The recent resignation of a Fed governor only adds to the sense that the institution is in flux at a moment when stability would be welcome.
Trump has made clear he views the renovation debacle as a window into deeper institutional rot. Whether the probe uncovers criminal conduct or merely exposes the kind of bureaucratic waste that taxpayers have learned to expect from Washington, the president wants the public to see the receipts. A project that has consumed $3.1 billion, with Trump estimating the final tab could reach $4 billion, and that may never open is not a minor embarrassment. It is the kind of spending that erodes public trust in every institution it touches.
Powell's chairmanship expires in roughly a month. If he steps aside, Trump gets his way without a courtroom fight. If Powell digs in, staying on the board, or claiming acting-chair authority, the confrontation moves into uncharted legal territory. And with Tillis blocking Warsh's confirmation, the Senate may not provide a clean resolution either.
The New York Post reported that Trump's threat to fire Powell was unequivocal, and that the president framed his restraint to this point as a deliberate choice, not a sign of weakness. The message to Powell was plain: leave on schedule, or be removed.
The American public deserves to know where $3.1 billion went. And no government official, no matter how many degrees of institutional separation he hides behind, should be able to dodge that question by simply refusing to leave.
