Watchdog finds no criminality in Fed renovation that drew Trump’s scrutiny

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s independent watchdog said Wednesday it found no reasonable grounds to believe there was a violation of federal law in a multibillion-dollar renovation project that drew criticism from President Donald Trump and short-lived scrutiny from federal prosecutors.

But the central bank’s board “had not effectively executed” a contract and its cost-management provisions, according to a 120-page report from the Office of the Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Even after four years of construction and over $2 billion in awarded construction costs, the Fed board had “not established a guaranteed maximum price” for the project, and had set up “insufficient” internal project governance to manage a project of such “magnitude and complexity,” the watchdog said.

Still, the report “did not identify administrative misconduct” nor any “reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of federal criminal law had occurred.”

The closure of the investigation follows a more than yearlong review into the construction site on the central bank’s Washington, D.C., campus, which became a fixation of the Trump administration as the president also pressured Jerome Powell, who was the Fed chair until Kevin Warsh took over in May, to cut interest…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business