President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell if Powell does not leave his post when his term expires, escalating a months-long standoff over who controls the nation's central bank. Trump also made clear that a federal probe into the costly renovation of the Fed's headquarters will continue regardless of Powell's departure.

"Well then I'll have to fire him, OK, if he's not leaving on time," Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Wednesday, the Daily Caller reported.

The remarks land less than a month before Powell's chairmanship expires on May 15, and with Trump's preferred replacement, Kevin Warsh, still awaiting Senate confirmation. Powell declared in March that he has "no intention" of leaving the Federal Reserve even after his chairmanship ends, setting the stage for a constitutional collision between the executive branch and the institution that sets interest rates for every American borrower and saver.

A chairman who won't leave

Powell's position rests on a legal distinction. His term as Fed chairman ends in May, but his seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors does not expire until January 31, 2028. Powell has signaled he would stay on as "chairman pro tem" if a successor has not been confirmed by the time his chairmanship lapses, the New York Post reported, citing precedent for such an arrangement.

Trump made no secret of his frustration with that plan. He told Bartiromo he has long wanted Powell gone but held off for strategic reasons.

"I've held back firing him. I've wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial, you know. I want to be uncontroversial."

Whether Trump can legally remove a sitting Fed chair is itself a contested question. Powell has previously said removal is "not permitted under the law." But as Fox News noted, while federal statute says Fed board members can only be removed "for cause," the law does not expressly shield the chairman's title from presidential action. Trump has said flatly, "I have the right to remove" Powell, a claim that, if tested, could produce the kind of high-stakes legal fight that has marked this administration's approach to institutional resistance, much like the Supreme Court's decision to take up Trump's birthright citizenship order.

The $3.1 billion renovation

The confrontation over Powell's tenure is tangled with a separate and growing scandal: the renovation of the Federal Reserve's headquarters. Trump visited the site on July 24, accompanied by Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and presented Powell with documents showing the project's cost had ballooned to $3.1 billion, a roughly 25 percent overrun.

Trump described what he saw in blunt terms during Wednesday's interview:

"They're gonna spend maybe $4 billion and you know what? I'm not sure the thing's ever gonna open, you know, I do that stuff very well. I went past the site the other day. I was driving past, they said take me past the Federal Reserve building. It took me past. There's very little work done inside."

The president drew a pointed comparison to his own construction record, saying he built the Trump Hotel, which he later sold to Waldorf Astoria, for around $201 million roughly seven or eight years ago. That building, he said, is bigger than the Fed headquarters.

Trump called the renovation something worse than a simple cost overrun. He framed it as both a criminal matter and a case study in government waste, telling Bartiromo the probe is "more than a criminal probe."

"It's a criminal probe, I guess, but it's also a probe of incompetence. How do you take a little building? I built a hotel for $201 million that's bigger than that building down the road."

He also relayed comments attributed to Warsh, his nominee to replace Powell, about the destruction of historic spaces inside the old building. Trump said Warsh told him that "the saddest part of it is they ripped down the most beautiful building of them all." Boardrooms and other rooms that were, in Trump's words, "the most beautiful in Washington" had been demolished as part of the project.

The renovation probe will not end even if Powell walks away from the Fed, Trump said. That distinction matters. It signals the administration views the headquarters project as a standalone accountability question, not merely a bargaining chip in the fight over who chairs the central bank. The pattern mirrors other institutional confrontations where the White House has pushed back against entrenched resistance, including recent clashes with Senate leaders over domestic spending priorities.

Congressional pressure mounts

Trump is not the only one pressing the issue. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida referred Powell to the Justice Department in July, alleging the Fed chairman lied to the Senate Banking Committee about the headquarters renovations during testimony in June. The referral adds a congressional dimension to what had been primarily an executive-branch dispute.

The Washington Examiner reported that Warsh's confirmation itself is now caught in the crossfire. Sen. Thom Tillis has vowed to block Trump's Fed nominees until the Justice Department investigation into Powell is concluded. That creates a circular problem: the probe delays the confirmation, the delayed confirmation gives Powell a pretext to stay, and Powell's continued presence fuels the very confrontation the probe was meant to resolve.

Trump told Fox Business the situation is straightforward. Just The News reported that the president framed his threat as contingent, he would fire Powell only if Powell refuses to leave voluntarily after a successor is confirmed. But the tone left little ambiguity about where this is headed.

"Whether it's incompetence, corruption or both, I think you have to find out," Trump said of the investigation.

What's really at stake

The clash between Trump and Powell has never been purely personal. It sits atop a long-running disagreement over monetary policy. Trump and Powell have sparred repeatedly over the Fed's refusal to lower interest rates at the pace the president wants. For millions of Americans carrying mortgages, car loans, and credit card debt, the Fed's rate decisions are not abstract, they show up in monthly payments.

Powell's insistence on staying past his chairmanship raises a question that goes beyond one man's career. If an unelected central banker can simply refuse to leave a leadership post because his board term hasn't expired, what recourse does a duly elected president have? The legal ambiguity around the Fed chair's removal is not a feature of sound governance. It is a gap that rewards institutional inertia over democratic accountability. Similar tensions between executive authority and entrenched officials have played out across the administration, from congressional demands to impeach federal judges to court battles over personnel decisions at the Pentagon.

The renovation scandal only sharpens the point. A project that has ballooned to $3.1 billion, with Trump estimating it could reach $4 billion, while "very little work" has been done inside is exactly the kind of government waste that erodes public trust. If Powell oversaw a headquarters renovation that blew past its budget by a quarter or more, and if he then misled Congress about it, the case for his departure is not political. It is practical.

May 15 is now a hard deadline. Either Powell steps aside, Warsh gets confirmed, or the country watches a sitting president attempt to remove a Fed chairman for the first time. The broader pattern, of institutions resisting elected leadership and daring the White House to act, is familiar territory for this administration, as seen in its lawsuit against California's electric vehicle mandate and other federal enforcement actions.

Taxpayers foot the bill for a $3 billion renovation that may never open. They pay interest rates set by a chairman who refuses to leave. And they're told the system is working as designed. At some point, accountability has to mean more than precedent.