Valuetainment - January 13, 2026


＂The Fed Got Caught＂ - DOJ DROPS THE HAMMER on Powell Over $2B SCANDAL

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Jerome Powell Trump Rand Paul Chair Powell Bill Pulte Joe Biden Khamenei Vicenza Besant Adam
“Kimmel Is In A WAR” - Rob Schneider RIPS Late Night Hosts “MLK’s Communist Ties” - How Stanley Levison CREATED Martin Luther King

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

186.67

Word count

1,820

Sentence count

139


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The FBI is investigating the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, for allegedly lying to Congress about a $2.5 billion project to renovate the building where he testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee in June of last year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Federal prosecutors open investigation into Federal Chair Powell.
00:00:05.440 Uh-oh.
00:00:06.060 Oh, boy.
00:00:07.020 Yep, they're going after Jerome Powell, which is steering up a lot of conversation.
00:00:13.680 Rob, is this him saying it, that it's happening?
00:00:15.420 Yep.
00:00:15.680 Go ahead, Rob.
00:00:17.360 Good evening.
00:00:19.380 On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas,
00:00:24.400 threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.
00:00:30.000 That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings.
00:00:39.500 I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy.
00:00:44.920 No one, certainly not the Chair of the Federal Reserve, is above the law.
00:00:48.900 You.
00:00:49.120 But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.
00:00:55.900 This new threat is not about my testimony last June, or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings.
00:01:03.300 It is not about Congress's oversight role.
00:01:06.140 The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project.
00:01:13.800 Those are pretexts.
00:01:15.120 The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public,
00:01:25.040 rather than following the preferences of the President.
00:01:28.640 This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions,
00:01:34.620 or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
00:01:39.120 I have served at the Federal Reserve under four administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike.
00:01:47.400 In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum.
00:01:55.620 You get the idea of what's happening.
00:01:56.660 So, Tom, what's going on over here, Tom?
00:01:58.080 So, what he did was the Fed chairman, Powell, was in front of Congress because to renovate a building, an individual building,
00:02:08.700 suddenly the price tag was $2.5 billion.
00:02:11.540 Now, when you look at the Department of Defense who once got caught paying $6,000 for a simple hammer,
00:02:17.360 you know that when the government is paying for things, there's graft, there's kickbacks, there's things, there's all these allegations.
00:02:25.040 I'm not saying that there was that on the Fed building, but all those allegations, usually when there's audits, really go, you know, point bad.
00:02:34.860 So, last year, in the ad there, there it is, Federal Reserve blows $2.5 billion on Palace of Versailles headquarters.
00:02:42.140 So, this was, they really got caught, Pat.
00:02:45.060 They were, this building is poorly managed.
00:02:47.800 So, it's embarrassing.
00:02:48.620 $2.5 billion.
00:02:49.140 And it's embarrassing.
00:02:50.240 $1 million?
00:02:50.260 So, Powell was over there, said a couple things that in Congress turned out to be not perfectly correct,
00:02:57.940 but no one, including the Congressional Committee, thought that Powell was out and out lying the way, say, Minneapolis-level fraud lying.
00:03:05.360 Well, Trump, at the same time, has been putting pressure on Powell, as has Fannie and Freddie, you know, Bill Pulte,
00:03:15.880 has been pushing on Powell to lower interest rates to see if we could help the housing market a little bit or a little bit more.
00:03:24.880 And Trump also wants to lower those rates for, Pat, U.S. debt is coming due, and it's going to be refinanced.
00:03:31.760 He wants it refinanced at lower interest rates.
00:03:34.420 So, he wants the rates down.
00:03:36.740 The Fed was saying no.
00:03:38.120 Well, the Fed is now saying, okay, the federal investigators of doing this, and this is Powell saying,
00:03:43.980 I think this is a little bit over the top considering what's going on at the Fed building,
00:03:48.460 and I think they're using it to exert political pressure on me regarding interest rates.
00:03:53.900 So, it's not about me operating as the Fed.
00:03:56.780 Suddenly, this is the president, you know, pushing politically because he didn't like my answer,
00:04:02.300 and so now he's having people investigate the building.
00:04:04.840 I think there's a little of both going on, Pat, quite frankly.
00:04:08.660 There is pressure on Powell to lower interest rates from the White House and from the Secretary Besant.
00:04:15.020 There is definitely pressure.
00:04:16.240 But there also is, let's face it, yet again, the American taxpayer paying 20x what they should be paying for something.
00:04:24.680 And so, somebody needs to be, and if the head of the Fed, who's a political position, is managing a building project,
00:04:32.380 the first thing I say is, wait a minute.
00:04:34.880 You're not going to take a career policy guy and have him manage a building project.
00:04:39.660 Pat and I have managed building projects.
00:04:41.420 It takes the special people to hold developers' feet to the fire, keep your bids low, get your delivery dates,
00:04:48.700 and not all those phone calls are going to be pleasant.
00:04:50.920 Sometimes it really takes some arm wrestling.
00:04:53.440 So, if Trump Powell is managing a renovation, it kind of doesn't surprise me that a policy wonk, you know,
00:05:01.080 ends up, you know, with his you-know-what stuck in the shredder because the thing is out of control.
00:05:09.020 You've got to know what it looks like to the average person.
00:05:10.580 The average person who's looking at this, Tom, is saying, you're not lowering the rates, I'm coming after you.
00:05:16.200 The average person sees it that way.
00:05:18.580 Forget about the whole thing.
00:05:20.160 You know, you talk to the average person.
00:05:21.780 That's very, that's partly true here.
00:05:23.580 Yeah, so if you look at the average person, the average person is saying, screw Jerome Powell,
00:05:28.040 all I care about is lower the rates, I want to refinance.
00:05:30.340 And I get that.
00:05:31.100 And that's 80%, 90% of America.
00:05:33.120 But the other side, you can also sit there and say, flip the, you know, tables.
00:05:36.800 And, you know, if it happens the other way around and it's not a term that you're running
00:05:40.640 and the president is Joe Biden doing this to Jerome Powell, what would you be saying?
00:05:44.540 Would you be sitting there saying, I agree with him?
00:05:46.200 Would you not agree with him?
00:05:47.060 So you have to be fair and see optics.
00:05:50.060 You know, I don't know if this is.
00:05:52.220 You just have to know, when is his time up, Rob?
00:05:54.120 Isn't his time coming up in June?
00:05:55.360 In May of 2026.
00:05:57.580 He's got four months.
00:05:58.160 It's coming up.
00:05:58.940 It's coming up in the next four months.
00:06:00.560 So I get it.
00:06:01.280 I mean, for four months to do that, you know, you don't want to just wait four more months
00:06:07.260 to get this just wrapped up and move on.
00:06:09.480 I don't know.
00:06:10.080 Adam, if you got some thoughts on this, we'll go.
00:06:11.680 Yeah, nobody's surprised to see Trump beefing with Jerome Powell.
00:06:15.260 We've covered this multiple times.
00:06:16.600 I kind of said it's like an East Coast, West Coast rap beef.
00:06:19.620 They're out there throwing threats.
00:06:20.800 Biggie versus Tupac.
00:06:21.640 You go, Biggie versus Tupac.
00:06:23.440 This is more like Tupac versus Sade.
00:06:25.760 So the reality is we shouldn't have Jerome Powell speaking.
00:06:30.820 The Fed doesn't speak unless there's some major problems, usually, unless they're announcing
00:06:34.940 some major announcement.
00:06:37.160 You know, monetary policy via the Fed, they have two primary components.
00:06:40.920 Setting the interest rate, which Trump is basically pissed about.
00:06:43.860 Right now, the current Fed fund rate is around three and a half, three, maybe four at the most.
00:06:51.000 The prime rate is around six and a half, seven.
00:06:53.340 And the number two, unemployment.
00:06:54.980 Unemployment is basically right where we need it to be, under 5%, I think around four, four and a half percent.
00:07:01.820 As much as I give Trump credit, and I'm completely all in on the Trump MAGA 2.0 state of affairs in America,
00:07:10.920 I don't like what he's doing with Powell.
00:07:12.540 I think Powell has overall done a good job.
00:07:16.300 Could he lower interest rates?
00:07:17.860 Yeah.
00:07:18.460 Should he?
00:07:19.420 Maybe.
00:07:20.180 But he's not going to jail.
00:07:21.780 He's not going to get in trouble.
00:07:22.920 The worst that's going to happen to him is exactly what he's dealing with, Trump's pressure and intimidation.
00:07:29.740 And he has four more months until he can go retire.
00:07:32.140 Okay.
00:07:32.500 Let me tell you what's going on and who the real MVP in America is the last four weeks, the last three weeks.
00:07:39.080 You know who the real MVP in America is?
00:07:41.300 That, unfortunately, they will not get the credit.
00:07:44.280 They will not be talked about.
00:07:45.720 You will not know their names.
00:07:47.860 You will not be able to give to their GoFundMe.
00:07:50.240 You will not be able to do anything with those guys.
00:07:52.540 You know who the real MVP the last few weeks has been in America?
00:07:55.420 The Delta Force.
00:07:57.080 The Delta Force.
00:07:58.420 When I was in the Army, I asked my orders to be, I was going to go be 18 Delta, 5th group.
00:08:03.260 I did all my interviews.
00:08:04.580 I got my orders.
00:08:05.500 I was going to re-enlist six years, go to DLI, go to SEER school, go to, you know, airborne, go to Special Forces.
00:08:12.360 And then I was going to go straight to Vicenza, Italy, to be in that area.
00:08:14.940 My friend ends up getting the orders.
00:08:16.760 He ends up becoming Delta.
00:08:18.740 The stuff you're hearing about on how they're going in in Venezuela and how they got them, the reports that are coming out, unreal.
00:08:25.100 And by the way, you know who's watching that very quickly?
00:08:28.180 Khamenei and Iran better be watching very closely because our Delta Force is really strong.
00:08:31.940 If they want to do something, they could get a lot of stuff done.
00:08:34.720 So, guess what is back?
00:08:36.300 You know these USA hats that we had, these beautiful USA hats with the future looks bright on the side and the future looks bright on the bottom?
00:08:44.780 These sell out within seconds when we launch these.
00:08:48.100 If you haven't picked one of these up, you love America.
00:08:51.600 There's never been a more important time, especially the 250-year anniversary, to go wear this.
00:08:56.940 This is the USA on the front, American flag on the side.
00:09:01.180 Future looks bright on the back.
00:09:03.000 And then you've got future looks bright here.
00:09:04.860 You can go back on this link, Rob, if you can put it below.
00:09:08.580 We also have the shirts to go with it.
00:09:10.520 Go back on that page as well.
00:09:13.380 It's right there.
00:09:15.100 There's the shirts to go with it.
00:09:16.660 There's the different kind of hats for women, for men.
00:09:20.020 Go a little bit lower if you could, Rob.
00:09:21.460 But if you haven't yet ordered one of these USA hats, buy one for yourself, for a friend, for a family member who loves America.
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