Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen told Republicans on Monday that she isn’t doing anything to block an investigation into how details of a Fed monetary policy decision were leaked in 2012.
Republicans say Yellen is preventing progress in the examination, but Yellen told House Republicans that the matter is out of her hands completely.
“The timing, pace, breadth and nature of that investigation are solely the province” of the inspector general and the Justice Department, Yellen told Reps. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas., and Sean Duffy, R-Wis., in a letter sent Monday.
Yellen said the central bank would provide documents related to the investigation to the House Financial Services Committee once the inspector general cleared them, but said doing so before that time would “risk jeopardizing” the criminal investigation. Hensarling chairs the committee, and Duffy chairs the subcommittee on oversight.
Monday’s letter is effectively a non-response to the charge Hensarling and Duffy leveled last week that the Fed was engaged in “willful obstruction” of the committee’s investigation into the Fed’s handling of a leak of information from a 2012 Fed monetary policy meeting. The Republican lawmakers had asked the Fed to immediately hand over all the documents relevant to the leak, some of which the Fed withheld on the grounds that they were part of the criminal investigation.
Information about the Fed’s plans for setting interest rates can move global markets. The Fed takes care to ensure that its deliberations are not leaked preferentially to any investors, but experts have said that the central bank did not follow its own protocol in the 2012 episode.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have become increasingly confrontational with the Fed and Yellen over what they have said is the central bank’s overly activist and unaccountable conduct of monetary policy.
The Office of the Inspector General did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Hensarling and Duffy’s accusations.
