by Washington (Reuters) -S -President Donald Trump is considering a lawsuit against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell with regard to his renovations management at Washington’s head office, said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt of the White House on Tuesday.
The potential step, previously presented in a presidential social media post, escalates Trump’s continuous pressure on the leader of the Central Bank to lower interest rates.
A Fed spokesperson had no comment.
Civil servants of the White House have said that they are investigating renovations of two historic buildings through the FED, which suggests that poor supervision and potential fraud have unnecessarily increased the costs and that the project is inappropriate to start up.
Trump visited the site a few weeks ago and repeated those accusations, even when he met Powell and personally made his business for reducing interest rates.
FED documents show that the costs, originally estimated at $ 1.9 billion, is now estimated at $ 2.4 billion, and the central bank says that the extra costs are usually due to higher work and material costs, as well as unexpected challenges, including asbestos supplying.
An opinion of the Supreme Court that was issued this summer in a non -related case about employees of other independent government agencies, supports the idea that the Fed is unique and that the law does not allow the president to remove a FED chairman because of differences in the direction of monetary policy.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; Edit by Mark Porter and Rod Nickel)
