Republican lawmakers are escalating their confrontation with Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and the bank’s inspector general over a leak investigation, accusing the Fed of “willful obstruction” of their oversight efforts.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Yellen and inspector general Mark Bialek, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Oversight and Investigations subcommittee chairman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin demanded that the Fed immediately hand over documents related to the 2012 leak and its internal investigation.
Yellen had declined to give the committee certain documents earlier in the month on the grounds that they were part of ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and the inspector general.
Hensarling and Duffy said in the letter that the timing of the investigations was “suspect” and possibly a “pretext for the Fed and the [inspector general] to delay complying with this committee’s requests.”
They rejected the idea that gaining access to the documents could jeopardize the Fed’s investigation, writing that “it is the integrity of your previous investigation that is at issue here.”
The letter was released just hours before Yellen was set to face reporters at an afternoon press conference following the conclusion of the Fed’s monetary policy committee.
The leak investigation concerns the Fed’s response to details of its monetary policy deliberations that appeared in an investment adviser’s newsletter in 2012 before the details were supposed to be made public.
Information about the Fed’s decisions are highly valuable and can move world markets.
The Fed, then under the leadership of Chairman Ben Bernanke, performed its own investigation, without initially involving the inspector general.
