.jpeg?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "JADE: ‘Being an ally means speaking up – no matter the consequences’ – UK Times")
A fake resignation letter generated by AI fooled Utah Senator Mike Lee into thinking that Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, had quit on Tuesday.
The senator tweeted and deleted the fake letter from his personal “basedmikelee” account, which staffers have confirmed that Lee operates directly.
“Powell’s out!” Lee tweeted, along with two siren emojis.
A scan of the image reveals that words in the Fed’s official seal are mispelled, indicating the letter’s inauthentic origins.
The Independent has reached out to the White House and Lee’s office for comment about the letter. Powell, for months, has been at odds with the president and MAGA right over lowering interest rates, a factor Donald Trump and others blame for slow economic growth. The Fed chair repeatedly declined to lower rates this year, citing a risk of inflation from Trump’s tariff agenda; his explanation further enraged the president.
Trump threatened to fire Powell earlier this year and spoke to lawmakers about the idea last week. The White House continues to deny that the president is considering firing Powell, whom he berated once again on Tuesday during an Oval Office event with the president of the Philippines.
Politico’s Jordain Carney reported that Lee told a group of journalists at the Capitol on Tuesday afternoon that he deleted his tweet after being unable to verify the letter’s authenticity.
“I don’t know whether it’s legit or not,” he said.
“[I]t occurred to me seconds after I posted it that I hadn’t seen it anywhere else, so I deleted it out of an abundance of caution,” he told reporters while leaving a Senate luncheon.
There was no indication from the Fed itself that Powell was resigning or planned to. The chairman gave remarks on Tuesday at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, with no mention of plans to change careers.
According to The Hill, the most prominent account to share the fake letter (other than Lee) was Benny Johnson, the conservative journalist-turned-influencer. Johnson apologized on Tuesday after realizing the letter was a fake.
Lee is one of the Senate’s most conservative members.
Earlier this year, he tweeted his agreement with Elon Musk over the prospect of the U.S. withdrawing from both the NATO defense pact and the United Nations, two blows that would effectively end the post-World War II western order.
The @BasedMikeLee account is run by him personally. It’s long been a vessel for the expression of some of his most political remarks, as well as more cringeworthy ones.
“This account is no cap — bussin, forreal forreal,” he wrote in a 2022 post.
News that Trump was considering firing the Fed chair — reported by Bloomberg last week as a White House official telling the outlet that the firing was imminent — was met with a dip in the markets. The independence of the agency from the White House is a long-held principle, and some economists have argued in recent days that Powell’s resignation could even aid that dynamic, given that his replacement would likely enact similar policies and calm fears about White House interference in monetary policy.
His ire at Powell over interest rates also led to an awkward moment for Trump when he criticized Joe Biden for appointing Powell to the Fed, only for news networks to remind him that Powell was in fact one of his first-term appointments.
On Tuesday, Trump reiterated that he believed Powell had moved to intentionally aid Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign when he lowered rates in 2024.
He made that same charge last week, while dismissing the prediction of his aide to Bloomberg and told reporters it was “highly unlikely” he would fire the Fed chair.
“I’m not talking about [firing Powell],” the president told reporters last week. “We get, fortunately, we get to make a change in the next, what, eight months or so, and we’ll pick somebody that’s good.”
