White House’s Vought Pressures Powell Over Fed Renovation

Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell

Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

A key Trump official said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has “grossly mismanaged” the institution and demanded more information about the central bank’s renovation of its headquarters in Washington.

“The President is extremely troubled by your management of the Federal Reserve System,” Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter addressed to Powell on Thursday. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington D.C. headquarters.”