Late yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Federal Prosecutors Open Investigation Into Fed Chair Powell.” As I’ve said, if 2025 was the year of preparation, 2026 is the Year of Offense. The Times’s article was awful. It was rank journalistic malpractice, as the paper increasingly seems to treat reporting the news as some kind of Telemundo game show. Meanwhile, last night Fed Chair Jerome “Marble Bidet” Powell excreted a shameless and unmanly bit of whiningand blame-shifting on Twitter.
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: https://t.co/5dfrkByGyX pic.twitter.com/O4ecNaYaGH
— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) January 12, 2026
Powell, trying to get ahead of the story, reported it himself. In the Sunday evening clip, the Fed Chair explained that he’d received several Grand Jury subpoenas, indicating that the DOJ was assembling a case against him. The Times got right down to work, describing the investigation as a witch hunt and a ‘feud’ between the President and the Fed Chair. “The investigation escalates Mr. Trump’s long-running feud with Mr. Powell,” the Times said, drolly.
The gist of Powell’s perspective —expressly adopted by the Times— was that, while “no man is above the law,” he personally is, since this new criminal investigation is nothing but political persecution, dammit, and totally illegitimate. Three things stood out about the Times’s awful story: (1) it only quoted Trump critics, but no Powell critics. (2) It never pinned down the DOJ’s likely charges, leaving its already handicapped readers fogged. (3) It assiduously avoided reporting who had launched the DOJ investigation in the first place.
Let’s try to help the Times by offering some real journalism.
It only took about ten seconds of googling to locate Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fl) criminal referral to the DOJ. She even posted a press release about it last July, and the title would have been extremely helpful to any reporter trying to find answers: “Rep. Anna Paulina Luna Refers Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for Criminal Investigation Over False Testimony.”
And there it was. Unlike the Times’ useless article, Luna’s July 2025 press release explained: (1) when Powell lied to Congress; (2) exactly what he said that wasn’t true; (3) which documents proved the Fed Chair lied under oath; and (4) which specific laws he allegedly broke, right down to the statute number (to wit: perjury and making false statements to federal officials).
The dustup centers on the Federal Reserve’s hyper-luxury $2.5 billion renovation of its headquarters building. According to Rep. Luna, the project includes swanky features like a VIP dining room, private elevators, a yoga retreat, premium marble, Disneyesque water features, and a rooftop arboretum where stressed fed governors can blow off steam by hunting kidnapped taxpayers.
During his sworn Congressional testimony, Powell denied that any of those features were included in the “final plans.” But Ms. Luna found the final plans and, contrary to Powell’s claims, dang it, the sumptuous features were right there. Thus: five Pinocchios.
Powell’s video mentions none of that helpful background. He didn’t even bother denying he said it or trouble himself to claim that it was true when he did. The Times could have checked Ms. Luna’s claims and debunked them, or at least asked Powell to comment on them. But nope. According to the Times, it’s just a feud.
Powell’s sudden and unexpected investigation is just the latest example of ammunition the Trump Administration quietly held in reserve throughout the second half of 2025— and only fired now, in the first two weeks of 2026. They’re surging. Powell’s tenure as Fed Chair expires in May, though he could still cling on until 2028 as one of the twelve Fed governors.
But if the DOJ develops evidence that Powell did lie, it would give Trump “cause” to legally fire him. Just saying.
We need to get it through government’s head that overseeing how our taxpayer dollars are spent IS THEIR JOB. Instead, the spend it like water and, when they run out, just go out and get more. Maybe we’ll FINALLY see someone held accountable for lying, they he probably was just incompetent.