Pirro’s investigation into Fed Chairman Powell will be difficult to appeal

Federal prosecutors in Washington are faced with a decision to decide whether Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will be quickly replaced or remain in office as politicians vie to replace him.

Going forward with planned appeals of recent adverse rulings, as U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro of the District of Columbia has argued, risks bogging down the investigation with complex and unresolved laws, former federal prosecutors with experience in appellate law say.

“Regardless of what procedural avenue they choose, the practical road ahead of them is brutally steep,” said Sean P. Murphy, a former assistant U.S. attorney who argued before the judge who ruled against Mr. Pirro’s investigation of Mr. Powell and briefed the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Trump administration’s plan to quickly confirm former Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh to replace Powell appears increasingly likely to fall victim to a legal battle.

Powell said in January that the Fed had received a subpoena from Pirro’s office, claiming it was an excuse to punish him for not responding to President Donald Trump’s demands for lower interest rates. Subsequent legal proceedings revealed that the subpoenas were related to the Federal Reserve’s overspending on building renovations and testimony about it, a matter Trump has described as “criminal” without providing specific evidence.

Fed lawyers asked Chief Judge James Boasberg of the Washington, D.C. District Court to quash the subpoena, arguing that prosecutors had failed to present significant evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Powell or the Fed. On April 3, Boasberg rejected prosecutors’ requests to reconsider his decision, leaving the investigation in limbo.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who plans to retire in early 2027, said he would block Warsh from running until the investigation into Powell is concluded. Chairman Powell’s term expires on May 15th, but we expect the Fed’s board of directors to allow him to continue as interim chairman until a candidate is finalized. Mr. Powell will remain in a separate capacity as a voting member of the board until January 2028.

“I will not resign from the board until the investigation is fully and truly concluded with transparency and finality,” Powell told reporters on March 18.

Tillis and Senate Republicans are otherwise backing Warsh. Therefore, once the investigation into Mr. Pirro is completed, it is possible that he will immediately approve and move to lower interest rates. If not, Powell could stay on indefinitely.

These two related issues will come to a head next week. The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold Warsh’s confirmation hearing on April 16, and the Trump administration is effectively forcing Tillis to prove his commitment to his principles. A spokesperson for Mr. Tillis said Wednesday that there are no changes to his plans.

Pirro has not yet appealed the matter, and it is not clear when he will do so.

Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, said the appeal may not be an easy matter. He was the Chief Appellate Prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

“The general idea is that appellate courts don’t like to see pretrial litigation brought forward, and they really want very clear decisions that are based on actual outcomes,” Richman said.

Pyros’ team recently said in court that it was still in the fact-finding stage.

Prosecutors told Boasberg during a March 3 hearing that they “don’t know at this point” whether Powell engaged in inappropriate conduct, according to the transcript. Prosecutors rejected Mr. Boasberg’s offer to resolve the allegations “ex parte,” meaning without the presence of the Fed’s legal team.

“The government’s fundamental problem is that it has not presented any evidence of wrongdoing,” Boasberg wrote.

The situation poses a legal problem for Mr. Pirro, since the Supreme Court generally does not allow partial appeals. There is no specific provision regarding whether an appeal can be made against a canceled criminal summons. Other cases have also shown that they do not want to encourage litigants to halt proceedings if they wish to challenge a judge’s decision. Appellate courts typically review the entire legal proceeding at once, rather than evaluating each claim individually.

To move forward, Mr. Pirro will need to argue that Mr. Boasberg effectively ended the investigation by quashing the subpoena.

“Several federal appeals courts have ruled that an order quashing a grand jury subpoena is an appealable order,” Pirro said in an interview Wednesday when asked about the prospect of an appeal.

Even if the court agrees that Pirro has the right to appeal, she may not win. It might come back to her. “Sometimes you don’t litigate a case even if you have a chance of winning, because you might set a bad precedent for yourself,” Murphy said.

Mr. Murphy resigned as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Appellate Division of the District of Puerto Rico in March 2025. He told NPR at the time that he no longer wanted to be associated with the Justice Department.

This broader political context will continue to be an important factor in future proceedings. Jeffrey Belin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, said that like Boasberg, other judges will question the government’s potential political motives in pursuing the Fed investigation. He was a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and worked as a prosecutor in the office now run by Pirro.

“This is part of the reason why the Department of Justice has long sought to remain independent and nonpartisan,” Belin said. “Once you lose the benefit of the doubt, it is difficult to regain that trust and your odds of success in various cases decrease.”