Fox's Larry Kudlow urges Jeanine Pirro to drop the investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell

Kudlow: “I don't think he's a criminal”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the January 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' America Reports

LARRY KUDLOW (GUEST): The president is backing off, and he had plausible deniability Sunday night when he told NBC that he didn't know anything about the indictment. And of course, there is no grand jury, and there is no charge, and then there's U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — and, I love her, I love her to death. I just want to say that. I've known her for decades and decades — but she's saying she's judging everything on the merits. But look, Powell is one of the worst Fed chairmen in history, as you noted — done more to undermine Fed independence, totally political, every cockamamie, woke, climate change —

SANDRA SMITH (FOX NEWS ANCHOR): Mohamed El-Erian —

KUDLOW: Same thing.

SMITH: — You know, Obama's economic advisor, says the same thing.

KUDLOW: Same thing, same thing. But I don't think he's a criminal. I mean, let me put it to you this way, in Washington, D.C., cost overruns are — that's the currency, there are not enough jails to throw people into for cost overruns, OK? So my view is, and the market is up 400 points today on this, and maybe —

SMITH: So would you call this a misstep on the part of the administration? 

KUDLOW: Well, I don't know —

SMITH: Or — I mean, they say that this is the DOJ.

KUDLOW: I think the District of Columbia jumped in too soon, OK? I think there's a lot of misunderstandings here. Look, I do not want to defend Jay Powell at all. I mean, I want him to go. The point of all this is, get him out of there, OK? So, if you remove this subpoena, that's what's going to happen. I think that he and his people go over and sit down with the U.S. Attorney Pirro — lovely Jeanine Pirro, who we all love — talk about the cost overruns and the papers that they should have delivered but didn't deliver, and then drop the whole thing. Just drop the whole thing because he is gonna be gone in May.