President Donald Trump has used his office and the legal system to try to bully the Federal Reserve into submission, and now he could have another option at his disposal: the Fed chair nominee’s father-in-law.
On Friday, Trump announced he was nominating Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell, whose term as chair is up in May.
Warsh happens to be married to Jane Lauder, daughter of billionaire cosmetic heir and longtime friend of Trump’s Ronald Lauder.
Lauder, 81, is the man who first put the thought in the president’s head to buy Greenland.
The seed to acquire the Danish territory was planted during Trump’s first term and ballooned into a top priority for the president, pitting him against some of the U.S.’s closest allies in recent weeks before he dramatically reversed course on demanding total control of Greenland last week at Davos.
As John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first term, recalled to the Guardian, the president called him into the Oval Office to discuss a new idea.
“He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland,” Bolton recounted.
That person Bolton learned was Lauder, who went on to acquire business interests in the territory.
Lauder continued to promote the idea of the U.S. taking over Greenland into Trump’s second term when he wrote in the New York Post that the president’s Greenland concept to acquire it “was never absurd—it was strategic" and called it “America’s next frontier” last February.
The GOP megadonor has donated millions to Republican campaigns and conservative causes. Most recently, he donated $5 million to the Trump-supporting super PAC MAGA Inc. in March of 2025, according to FEC files.
Trump has named Lauder’s son-in-law as his pick to lead the world’s top central bank at a tumultuous time where the president has attempted to undermine the Fed’s independence with a maximum pressure campaign for it to lower interest rates.
Warsh married Lauder’s daughter Jane, a fellow Stanford grad, in 2002. She’s estimated to be worth $2.7 billion, according to Forbes as a businesswoman and heiress to the Estée Lauder Company.
In his announcement on Friday, Trump called Warsh straight out of “central casting” and a person he has known for a long time. In his Truth Social post, the president also appeared to include much of Warsh’s biography, was it was laid out on his Georgetown’s bio page.
Warsh was on the short list to be nominated for chair during Trump’s first term when he instead opted for Powell, who he has since turned on in a series of vicious attacks as “too late” for not lowering interest rates.
At the time, the suggestion of nominating Warsh as chair was met with an avalanche of criticism.
The Harvard-educated lawyer got his start on Wall Street before joining the Bush White House.
President George W. Bush nominated him for the Fed in 2006, making him the youngest appointee in the central bank’s history at 35. He served until 2011.
At the time of his nomination, he lacked high-level academic credentials leading to some concern about his qualifications for a job forming monetary policy.
Former Fed Vice Chair Preston Martin, a Reagan appointee, said Warsh was “not a good idea” and if he were on the Senate Banking Committee “I would vote against him.”
Trading was down on Friday after the president announced his pick.
As a member of the Fed, Warsh was known for his hawkish stance and backed keeping interest rates up to combat inflation.
Last time he was considered for the top job, The Washington Post zeroed in on his inflation focus in a brutal write-up on the case against Warsh.
“His specialty was seeing inflation problems that didn’t exist,” it read. “He warned about inflation in 2006 when, excluding volatile food and energy prices, it was just 2.1 percent. Then he did in 2007 when it was 2 percent by the same measure. And again in 2008 when core prices were rising a relatively nonthreatening 2.3 percent, going so far as to say that he was “still not ready to relinquish my concerns on the inflation front” the day after Lehman Brothers failed."
Warsh ended up being a key liaison between the Fed and Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis.
However, the partner at investor Stanley Druckenmiller’s firm has called for slashing interest rates as the Fed reduces its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. The position puts him more in line with the president, who has constantly demanded that the Fed cut rates.
But Warsh still hurdles with being confirmed by the Senate. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee called Warsh a qualified nominee but slammed the Justice Department’s continued investigation of Powell.
“Protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from political interference or legal intimidation is non-negotiable,” he wrote on X. “My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of Chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved.”
Without his vote, Warsh’s nomination could remain in limbo as the Senate moves forward with the confirmation process.
Asked about whether the Justice Department should still be investigating Powell on Friday, Trump rambled about the Federal Reserve renovations being over budget and indicated the probe would continue.
“He’s either incompetent, or he or somebody is a crook, and we’ll find out,” Trump said of Powell.
