Mystery swirls over Trump's secret calls with Fed chair: ‘Do what you want’

Democrats want answers from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, demanding to know whether he is hiding secret conversations with Donald Trump.

The president says he and Warsh have talked. Warsh’s official records say they haven’t. And the Fed chair isn’t explaining the gap, the Washington Post reported.

On Friday, the Fed released Warsh’s September calendar, and once again, Trump’s name doesn’t appear. That makes "five months in a row," every month since Warsh took over in May, with no logged contact with the president. It comes despite a request this summer from Senate Democrats that he include any such conversations.

According to the Post, "The calendars are one of the few windows into how often a president reaches the official who leads the central bank’s decisions on interest rates, and previous Fed chairs have recorded interactions with presidents there. The Fed is designed to operate independently of the White House, setting rates based on its own best assessment of the economy rather than short-term political pressure."

On Sept. 16, the same day Warsh and his colleagues raised rates a quarter point against Trump’s wishes, the president told reporters he had weighed in on Warsh’s vote.

“I talked to Kevin, and I said, ‘You might as well vote with the board ’cause it’s not gonna matter,’” Trump said, noting that Warsh lacked the votes to change the outcome.

When a reporter asked if he had tried to sway Warsh, Trump said he hadn’t. “No, I didn’t convince him. No, I said, ‘Do what you want,’” he said, adding that he wanted Warsh “to be independent.”

Neither side has cleared it up, the report notes. The White House has refused to say when that conversation took place, and Warsh won’t confirm it ever happened.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and three other Democratic senators wrote to Warsh in August, asking him to state in writing whether he had spoken with Trump and to correct his calendars if so. Van Hollen’s office told the Post on Friday that Warsh never replied.

“It’s clear neither Warsh nor Trump give a damn about transparency to the American people,” Van Hollen said. “Under a Democratic majority in Congress, we will continue pushing for that much-needed transparency.”