WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump is considering a lawsuit against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell related to his management of renovations at the Fed’s Washington headquarters, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday.
The potential move, suggested earlier in a presidential social media post, escalates Trump’s continuing pressure on the central bank leader to cut interest rates.
A Fed spokesperson did not have a comment.
White House officials have said they are investigating renovations of two historic buildings by the Fed, suggesting poor oversight and potential fraud have driven up the cost unnecessarily and that the project is inappropriately ostentatious to boot.
Trump visited the site a couple of weeks ago and repeated those accusations, even as he met with Powell and made his case in person for cutting interest rates.
Fed documents show the cost, originally estimated at $1.9 billion, is now budgeted at $2.4 billion, and the central bank says the extra expenses are mostly due to higher labor and materials costs as well as unexpected challenges, including asbestos abatement.
A Supreme Court opinion issued this summer in an unrelated case about employees of other independent government agencies backs the idea that the Fed is unique and that the law does not allow the president to remove a Fed chair because of differences over the direction of monetary policy.
(Reporting By Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Mark Porter and Rod Nickel)
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