Thom Tillis agrees to move forward with Kevin Warsh’s Fed nomination | CNN Business

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who sits on the banking committee that approves Federal Reserve nominees, said Sunday he will support Kevin Warsh’s appointment as the next Fed chair. “I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh. I think he’s going to be a great Fed Chair,” Tillis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Tillis had previously blocked a vote to move forward with Warsh’s nomination due to the Justice Department’s probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends on May 15. The probe was dropped on Friday. Tillis said in a statement Sunday that the DOJ’s investigation “was a serious threat” to the central bank’s independence. “If we had allowed this (investigation) to occur, I think it would have had devastating consequences for our financial systems and the markets worldwide,” Tillis said. The investigation was launched after months of President Donald Trump’s complaints about lower interest rates and accusations of impropriety and incompetence in Powell’s leadership of the central bank’s multibillion-dollar renovation project at its Washington, DC, headquarters. “I feel like there were prosecutors in DC