Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) slams the DOJ investigation into Jerome Powell: “[Trump] has pushed back on the Fed at every opportunity… this latest is weaponizing the Department of Justice as a way to try to bring Jerome Powell to his knees. If that happens, it is bad for the American economy.”

DANA BASH: I have to ask you about what’s going on with the Fed and the administration, just the fact that there is a federal investigation into the Fed chair Jerome Powell and the extraordinary video that he released. SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): So this is really stunning and if I can let me just back up for like two seconds to say Fed independence, you may hear those words a lot, but what it’s really about and has been in place for decades and decades, Democrats and Republicans saying that we count on the Fed to make monetary policy decisions, meaning interest rates up, interest rates down, based on their best interpretation of the data. Now you can argue whether they get it right or get it wrong, but insulated from political pressure and that’s why they get these long terms, that’s why their budget doesn’t go through Congress or the President. Donald Trump has been trying virtually from the day he got into the White House to get control of the Fed so that he can make the decisions about monetary policy and what’s the risk associated with that? Any president who can do that will want to lower those interest rates, juice the American economy in the short term, even though the long term consequences of that will be more inflation, bad for the economy overall. Donald Trump has made multiple plays to get control. He’s tried firing or claimed he was going to fire Jerome Powell, tried to fire Lisa Cook. He has pushed back on the Fed at every opportunity trying to seize control of the Fed. And this latest is weaponizing the Department of Justice as a way to try to bring Jerome Powell to his knees. If that happens, it is bad for the American economy, it is bad for the American consumer. BASH: And you’re not exactly the biggest fan of Jerome Powell, to say the least. You have said that he took a plane thrower to banking regulations, that he’s putting jobs at risk, that he increased costs for families, allowed a culture of corruption to fester in the Fed. And the fact that you’re now, I guess, maybe you tell me, you’re not necessarily defending him, you’re defending the process. WARREN: I’m defending the process because understand, I have argued with Jerome Powell about what the data show and what the right response to those data are. We have locked horns over this multiple times. But I have never said that it should be up to the president to fire him to be able to get rid of him. And here’s the thing. Donald Trump has already said repeatedly, publicly, that anyone he appoints to be chair of the Fed will be somebody who agrees with Donald Trump all the time. In other words, Donald Trump has publicly announced he wants a sock puppet running the Fed and that he will be the one who will be setting the dials on inflation and on other issues.

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