STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Elie Honig has been listening along with us. He's a former assistant U.S. attorney, now a legal analyst for CNN. Welcome back.
ELIE HONIG: Good to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. When Jay Powell says this is a political investigation, what evidence supports that in your mind?
HONIG: I would say the entire run of the past year or so at the Justice Department. We have a string of prosecutions, some of which the president has explicitly called for, and that's very different from anything we've seen in the past. There was an infamous Truth Social post the president put up on September 20, where he called for the DOJ to prosecute Letitia James, Jim Comey and Adam Schiff. To date, DOJ has indicted, unsuccessfully, the first two of those. Adam Schiff, the third, remains under investigation. You add that to the fact that the president has a long-standing, very public disagreement and feud with Jerome Powell, and it's not hard to do the math.
INSKEEP: But then there's Jeanine Pirro's statement that Ryan Lucas mentioned. This is a quote from that statement. "The word indictment has come out of Mr. Powell's mouth, no one else's. None of this would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach." Is it possible this is a misunderstanding?
HONIG: Well, there is not an indictment yet. That is correct. But there clearly is an investigation. We know that because federal grand jury subpoenas have been served on the Fed. And even - who knows if there will be an indictment? If so, that's a whole different level. But even short of an indictment, investigating somebody for political purposes is, in itself, a very serious step to take. A person who gets investigated, even if not indicted, has to incur financial costs, stress, damage to relationship, damage to personal relationships and family members. And that's why, when I was at the Justice Department and still to this day, there's a policy that you're not supposed to just arbitrarily open up investigations. You need some good-faith basis. It's a low bar, but you need some good-faith basis that a crime occurred. So the mere opening of an investigation is, in itself, a very serious step.
INSKEEP: Some good-faith basis that a crime occurred. The complaint of the administration has to do with cost overruns in the renovation of the headquarters of the Fed. And this has led to an interesting part of that statement Ryan mentioned from Lisa Murkowski, one of the Republicans who is dubious of this entire thing. And this is a quote from Lisa Murkowski. Quote, "If the Department of Justice believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns - which are not unusual - then Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice." Do you think that Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice?
HONIG: Well, Congress certainly has an oversight role with respect to DOJ that I think, thus far, they - Congress - have failed to fill entirely. There's been no meaningful inquiry from Congress in the prior politically charged investigations. To the point of what Jerome Powell is being investigated for, based on the reporting and the subpoenas, based on what we know, this is not an investigation for theft or for misuse of federal funds. It's an investigation for potential perjury relating to testimony that Jerome Powell gave to Congress in June of 2025.
And to that end, Steve, perjury charges are exceptionally difficult for prosecutors to make. You can't just show - as a prosecutor, it's not enough to show an ambiguous statement, a misleading statement or even an incorrect statement. You have to show - as a prosecutor, if you're going to charge someone with perjury and convict them, you have to show a specific, objectively false statement that the person intentionally falsified, that the person went up there and gave a concrete, specific, intentional lie. That's hard to do.
INSKEEP: That sounds very much like the challenge we face as journalists. We very rarely...
HONIG: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Say that someone lied because who knows really what their state of mind was?
HONIG: Exactly, and state of mind is the hardest part to prove when it comes to perjury. I think people sometimes are a little quick to say any misstatement, whether it's in court or Congress, oh, perjury. But you have to show that state of mind. You have to show that intent.
INSKEEP: Elie Honig is a CNN legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Thanks, as always.
HONIG: Thanks, Steve.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
