(Yahoo! Finance) - Wednesday is likely to mark Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s last policy meeting and press conference as chair of the central bank.
Less clear is whether Powell will remain on the board as a governor.
His term as chair concludes May 15, but Powell could continue as a governor until 2028. Members of the Fed are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for 14-year terms.
Until last Friday, questions swirled about whether Powell’s intended successor, Kevin Warsh, would be in place by the May 15 deadline. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was blocking Warsh’s nominaton from moving out of the banking committee as long as a Justice Department investigation into Powell remained unresolved.
On Friday, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced that the Justice Department was closing its investigation and handing it off to the Fed’s inspector general. On Sunday, Tillis told “Meet the Press” that he was ready to support Warsh’s confirmation.
“We anticipate that Chair Powell will want ‘to see what happens’ before stepping down from the Board, with the Inspector General’s report the next likely key checkpoint,” Piper Sandler head of central bank policy Kurt Lewis said.
Powell himself has left the matter open.
In a press conference in March, Powell said he had “no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over, with transparency and finality.” Whether the handoff from DOJ to the Fed’s watchdog meets that bar, only Powell knows.
He further said he had not decided whether he would remain a governor once a new chair was in place and the investigation was concluded.
A case for ‘institutional continuity’
EY chief economist Gregory Daco wrote in a client note Monday that he thinks Powell will continue to serve on the board, but for institutional continuity, not politics.
Warsh has signaled that he wants to recalibrate how the Fed operates, calling for “regime change,” proposing a new inflation framework, a smaller balance sheet, and changes in communication.
Warsh told Senate lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last week that he believes Fed members should speak less frequently, pull back forward guidance, and stop telegraphing what the central bank will do before interest rate meetings.
He did not commit to holding a press conference after every policy meeting, a practice put in place by Powell that is closely watched by investors.
Daco said a Fed under Warsh’s leadership points to a more centralized, less transparent, and potentially more politically exposed policy framework.
“In that context, Powell remaining on the Board would help preserve institutional continuity, anchor the existing communication approach, and provide a stabilizing counterweight during the transition,” Daco wrote.
There is precedent for a Fed chair remaining on the board after their term as chair ends, though it is rare. Marriner Eccles stayed on as a governor from 1948 to 1951 following the end of his chair term, during a period of tension between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury over interest rate policy. That period culminated in the 1951 Fed-Treasury Accord, which reestablished the Fed’s independence after it had been pressured to support government financing during and after World War II.
Dropped but not final
The DOJ launched its probe in January, looking into whether Powell lied to Congress last summer about cost overruns on building renovations to the Fed’s headquarters in Washington. The project was proposed and approved by the Fed’s board in 2017, when Powell was a member of the board but not yet its chair. Since then, the project has been subjected to annual budget reviews by Fed leadership. The cost of updating the central bank’s headquarters has increased to nearly $2.5 billion from an initial estimate of $1.9 billion in 2021.
“What we wanted to make sure is that this conduct is investigated,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told “Meet the Press.” “That’s been the goal from the start, is to understand what is going on with that situation, and with the building, and the cost overruns, and why it’s costing so much money.”
President Trump on Saturday said the investigation has not been dropped.
“What I want to look at is how can a building that I could have done for $25 million cost $4 billion?” Trump said, inflating the cost estimate. “He was in charge, so we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
The investigation has already hit a bump when a federal judge last month threw out two Justice Department subpoenas, effectively nullifying the probe. Pirro had vowed to appeal before dropping the case last week, though Tillis clarified that any appeal now would be procedural and not for the purpose of reissuing subpoenas.
Blanche reiterated that if the IG uncovers evidence of criminal conduct, there is no doubt that the Justice Department would reopen its investigation.
“I suspect Mr. Powell wants to see what happens with the appeal and to make sure that it is fully settled after the appeal. It could be a lengthy process, hopefully not,” Tillis told “Meet the Press.”
TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiburg said he also expects Powell to stay at the Fed until the inspector general probe ends and the DOJ fully terminates the criminal probe.
“We see that taking months,” he said.
By Jennifer Schonberger - Senior Reporter
April 28, 2026
