Trump asking advisers if he can legally fire Fed chief

Earlier this year, Trump’s advisers told the President that it was doubtful he would have the law behind him if he fired Powell. But Trump has renewed the issue after the Fed again raised its benchmark interest rate this week.

So far, the White House hasn’t come to a final legal determination on Trump’s authority to fire his Fed chairman, whom he nominated a year ago. The law states the President can fire a Fed governor for cause, but it hasn’t been tested on the firing of a chairman…

“I’d be very careful doing that,” Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said Saturday on Capitol Hill.
A senior member of the Senate banking committee, Shelby said that the Federal Reserve is “set up to be independent of the President” and “should remain independent of politics.”