Sen. Cynthia Lummis, left, and Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michael Barr
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said she thinks President-elect Donald Trump “has the legal authority” to remove Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision.
“Michael Barr has got to go,” Lummis said at an event in the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 11, contending he either should resign immediately or “be fired by President Trump.”
Her comments came in the context of a speech about “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” which she described as “the weaponization of the banking system by the federal bank agencies to block certain disfavored industries (such as digital assets) from access to financial services.”
Lummis is a vocal advocate of the cryptocurrency industry, and she previously introduced legislation in collaboration with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., to split jurisdiction of digital assets between the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with a host of other provisions.
Under Barr's leadership, the Fed is “unaccountable even to Congress,” Lummis said, contending that lawmakers need better insight into the agency to “figure out what’s going on with banking supervision.”
When Barr testified in the House Financial Services Committee in November, he told lawmakers, “As (Fed) Chair (Jerome) Powell said, we serve fixed terms of office, and I intend to serve my fixed term of office." Barr first took office in July 2022 to serve a four-year term as vice chair.
Powell addressed the issue at a Fed news conference earlier in November, when a reporter asked whether Trump could demote Powell or any of the other Fed governors with leadership positions. The Fed chair responded, “Not permitted under the law.”
Later at the event Dec. 11, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., criticized other federal agency leaders, contending that “(SEC Chair) Gary Gensler, (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director) Rohit Chopra, and (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair) Marty Gruenberg ascended to office and plotted to destroy the digital asset innovation in the United States.”
Trump recently announced he plans to nominate Paul Atkins to chair the SEC after Gensler steps down, and sources say Atkins will likely advocate for a less hostile approach to crypto firms.
When asked if he agrees with Lummis that Trump could remove Barr from office, Emmer said he wouldn’t get into the issue, noting, “I make it a habit of trying not to tell people what the law provides publicly. I think I leave that to the president of the United States, and Donald Trump, if that's what he does ... will have a legal basis to do it.”
