April 3 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday refused a Department of Justice request for him to reconsider his earlier ruling to block grand jury subpoenas it issued to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Friday said he would not lift his block on subpoenas that the Justice Department issued to board of the Federal Reserve regarding the $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s complex in Washington, D.C.
The judge had previously blocked the subpoenas because, he said, they had nothing to do with a Justice Department probe about the renovations, but rather were intended to pressure Powell into adjusting interest rates, as President Donald Trump had been chiding him to do for months.
“On March 11, 2026, this Court issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order that quashed the Government’s subpoenas directed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Research System,” Boasberg wrote in a response to the Justice Department request that was filed on Friday.
“The Government promptly moved for reconsideration of that decision,” he wrote. “As its cursory brief neither offers new evidence nor points to any material error, the Court will deny the Motion.”
The DOJ launched its criminal investigation into the Fed’s renovation budget, which Powell at the time called “pretexts” to punish him for not setting interest rates based on Trump demands.
Boasberg, in his response to the Justice when he blocked the subpoenas said that the government “has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”
The Justice Department later acknowledged when appealing Boasberg’s quashing of the subpoenas that it did not have evidence that a crime had been committed, instead saying that there were “1.2 billion reasons for us to look into it.”
