Jason Leopold starts every morning the same way.

He wakes up in his Los Angeles home early, sometimes too early, sadly, at like four or four or thirty.

The house is still, his wife sleeping, his dog, Bella Lakosi also sleeping.

The room's pitch black, curtains closed.

And then I see the glow of my cell phone calling to me.

Pick me up, Jason, pick me up.

See what's going on?

Open me.

As he reaches toward the nightstand for his phone, he's thinking.

Please, let there be a whole bunch of documents.

Please, Let there be a whole bunch of documents.

Please.

And if there are documents, I'm not going to it first.

I want to save it till the very end.

In the meantime, he's checking his push notifications for news that broke on the East Coast while he slept.

I'm thinking, okay, for your request.

Interesting, We'll save it.

I wake up feeling like I constantly have to find a new request.

I don't like to fall behind.

So I've been building this pipeline for nearly twenty years.

April twenty seventh, twenty twenty three, was no different.

That day, he was scrolling Twitter.

It was called Twitter.

Then he's scrolling, scrolling through.

I'm scrolling, scrolling through.

Until a tweet from his colleagues at Bloomberg caught his eye.

FED chair Jerown Powell held a call with Russian pranksters who were posing as Ukrainian President Voladimir Zelenski, according to video shown on Russian TV.

I mean, I just laughed.

Jason couldn't click the article fast enough, But after reading it, he had more questions than answers.

The most obvious.

One, how the hell was he duped by Russian pranksters.

This is Jerome Powell.

He's the chairman of the FED.

He said's interest rates?

So, but how did that happen?

Jason left out of bed, giddy pacing.

I'm already imagining what the records look like.

And I know there's got to be records, and I'm playing out the scenario of me getting the records.

Only one thing left to do.

I have to file a request right now, turn it up.

I'm investigative journalist Jason Leopold.

I spend most of my days getting documents from the government.

I'm attorney Matt Topic, and I fight them in court to open their files.

When they don't want to from Bloomberg.

And No Smile.

This is Disclosure, a podcast about buying loose government secrets, the Freedom of Information Act, and the unexpected places that takes us.

Hey, Matt, have you ever been pranked?

Like tip fall for a scam?

It was an email from someone It was like, I need help buying Amazon gift cards.

I don't know, like I can't get into where.

Can you please buy me these gift cards?

And I'll pay you back.

But if you ever met the person that it was purporting to be from, one hundred percent that person would have done that.

Like whoever scammed it, they just dumb locked into like the exact right person, and so like I kind of felt for it, and then I got a call from Amazon.

It was like, hey, it looks like somebody's trying to scam me for these And then I felt like a real idiot at that point.

Yeah, that is an elder abuse scam.

I got to look up your.

Age and I'm not even half as old as you.

You know who else has been pranked?

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.

The thing is, Powell's a guy who's walking in the shoes of Valan greens Band, Ben Bernanki, and Janet Yellen.

When a Fed chief coughs, markets move.

If there's a formula for job success, it's that you run the central bank of the world's biggest economic power while saying as little as humanly possible in public about how you plan to do it.

So back in April twenty twenty three, Jerome Powell found himself in a pickle.

It turns out a meeting he thought he had with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski wasn't actually with Zelenzki at all.

It was with these two Russian pranksters.

And this all came to light in a video of their meeting that went viral on social media.

I see all this and I am like, this is incredible Foyer material like that.

I knew there had to be a report.

I knew that there was probably, you know, a bunch of emails behind the scenes.

So I filed this request with the Federal Reserve.

What did you ask for it?

So whenever I file a request, I try to imagine, like being a fly on the wall as everything's sort of unfolding within a federal government agency.

What does that consist of?

I'm imagining that while this was being planned, that there's some email traffic, there's some discussions, and it would be very clear that there'd be some kind of investigation, right.

I just know that from filing similar Foyer requests with Agency Inspectors General.

So I asked for final reports of an investigation that may have taken place into how Powell was duped, and so I kind of kept it pretty narrow.

I asked for a few days of records.

You first get an acknowledgement that says, yes, we have records and are processing them.

So first just get an acknowledgment letter we got your request.

I check in with, you know, with the Federal Reserve.

They say they're processing the records.

They send me a few pages and withheld more than one hundred due to an ongoing investigation.

And the fighting begins with Federal Reserve in terms of trying to probably lose these records.

So to quote the song Waiting Room by the great post hardcore band Fugazi, I am a patient boy, Oh wait, I wait, I wait, I wait.

So I waited until I got a nod from sources that the investigation was over, and then in February twenty twenty four, I filed a new request for some documents that I'd requested a year earlier, and this time I hit paid dirt.

I have to hand it to the FED.

They turn over a lot of documents that really kind of lay out timeline, investigative reports, staff emails with dates and timestamps, and I got to tell you, the whole thing kind of played out like a movie.

So we're going to tell you parts of it like it's a movie for your ears.

We've even invited a few comedians to read the emails.

Oh yeah, like who well, Matt, We've got Josh Gondleman, Katherine Blandford, and Adam Gilbert.

Awesome, I'm so excited.

All right, here we go, Act one, Scene one.

Just after eight am on the morning of January tenth, twenty twenty three, Powell's assistant received an email from Ukrainian email address subject President of Ukraine Chairman Powell request it says as read by Josh Gondleman, the way he would read it if he was the one who wrote it, Dear redacted.

The employee's names were withheld.

President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenski would like to have a conversation with Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Honorable Jarre Powell.

The email signature says it's from the Deputy Head of the Office of President Selenski, a man named Kirilo Timoshenko.

He says Lensky wants to.

Personally congratulate him with recent holidays.

So wish him a happy New York Yes, and discuss common issues and plans, such as.

The impact of war in Ukraine on the world economy and forecast on the economic situation in the world.

Wait, waito, Well, a foreign government wants to know what the FEDS forecast of the future, Like everybody wants to know that, right, right, isn't that like the thing they don't do or when they do, it's like very very carefully crafted.

It's like, first of all, this is non public info.

I mean, yeah, totally, Howell probably does have a forecast on the world economy based on you know, lots of insider information, I hope.

So, so the fact that they even made that pitch, and you know, the assistant's like.

Right, so it's congratulations on the holidays.

We want to talk to you about the impact that the Ukrainian war is having in the world economy, and we want to know whether we should buy gold or what we should do in the future before you make any public announceence.

Okay, all right, I'm with you, continued.

He's like Zelenski just had a productive chat with the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Legard.

It went so well.

We want to do it again with Powell.

We are ready to organize a video or telephone conversation at any time convenient for your side.

I will wait for your response with best regards.

Kirillo Timshenko.

Is Timyshenko a real person?

Yes, that's the real name of an official for the Ukrainian government.

Four minutes later, Powell's assistant responded with this email, as read by Catherine Blandford.

We are in receipt of the request and we will revert back.

So do we have any idea how they got this email address?

Yes, they got it from someone at the European Central Bank.

According to the rest of the email thread, if Leguard took the meeting, Powell probably should too.

Do we know whether Powell has had other such calls with other world leaders?

Like?

Is this a normal common thing for him to be doing?

Certainly other officials such as Christine Legard.

I mean that seems normal, but you know, speaking to the President of Ukraine.

I mean, yeah, it's I haven't seen any of it.

A few hours later, the assistant responded again, Powell had agreed to the meeting.

The assistant proposed dates and times.

They settled on January nineteenth, twenty twenty three, at nine am Washington time.

All right, So they're trying to sell it by being like, hey, we know Zelensky previously talked to the European Central Bank?

Did that actually happen?

Was there actually such a meeting?

Well, we'll get into that.

A lot happened in those nine days.

Concern is mounting this morning over a new COVID sub variant that is rapidly spreading across the country.

About an hour and a half before the call was scheduled to begin, one at the FED wrote an email with a change of plans.

Their Kiri low chair Palell has tested positive for COVID.

He is very much looking forward to talking with President Zelenski, but we would appreciate if the call today could be postponed.

We will work to reschedule the call as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding, Sincerely redacted.

Wait, do the records tell us what this person is doing when they're sending the emails?

No, Matt.

Unfortunately these records do not include vibes.

But it's not hard to imagine the esteemed venues where important government work takes place.

So we've supplied some Less than twenty minutes later, Dear.

Redacted, President Zelenski wish to share Powell.

A speedy recovery.

Of course, let's move this conversation to a more favorable time.

Also, I know that this conversation is very important for President Zelenski, and we are ready to arrange it at a convenient time for Jair Powell as soon as possible.

January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three was the new date of the call.

So January twenty fourth comes and Powell is still recovering from COVID at home, but he's well enough to put on a black sport jacket over a white collared shirt and gold tie to hop on the video call, and.

We just say, it's a great honor to speak to you.

Now, we don't know what Powell is actually staring at right here, because the recording doesn't show us a Lensky side of the video call, but we can see Powell.

He's thin with a full head of gray white hair.

His virtual background appears to place him in a tranquil reading nook with white walls, a yuppie white couch, and a dainty white tea set overlooking us accluded forest.

It's like, I know you're living in a war zone, but look at this great environment that I get to live in.

I'm aware that Ukraine's suffering.

People like me just want to support you in any way we can, but I have limited ways to do that in my professional job.

All is clear from the jump that if this call is about money for the war, there isn't much to discuss, no matter.

I think that you are a wise person, one of the wisest person in the world.

He asks about whether Russian sanctions are working.

It seems like the Russians have been able to avoid the harshest application of the sanctions.

He debriefed Powell on his call with Christine Legard, who he claims, said the United States can win any war at any costs.

There will be only one winner who has a big gun.

She told me that I like that.

He even solicited Powell's opinion on his counterpart, Russian Central bankhead Alvira Nebulina.

She's quite good at her job.

She's extraordinarily capable.

At one point, the discussion veered into one of the touchiest subjects pertaining to the US economy, interest rates.

If the rate is raised further, the standards of living of the population will fall.

So how much should it fall in order for the FETE to stop raising.

The Powell sort of grimaced and looked off screen, perhaps surprised by the question.

Why on earth would Zelensky be asking these questions?

Isn't Powell like, what the hell does this have to do with Ukraine?

He should have been very suspicious at this point.

The market is already pricing in two more quarter percentage point rate hikes.

We'll look around after we make those two and we'll say, you know, should we do any more?

And then the question will be how long do we keep rates at this level?

I think we'll keep him there for quite some time.

Is this all things he's already said?

Like?

Is he just telling him what he's already publicly said?

Well, that's the question.

Well, let's come back to that.

And then comes the weird asks.

We haven't gotten to the weird part yet.

No, there yet.

Okay, all right, I'm so excited.

Let's have it.

If you could present me a printing press, I would be really happy.

We have one of those, but but we keep it in the basement.

Oh okay, you could also build a fourteenth for bank or the Fed on our territory.

We could do that.

Let me come back to you on that.

Well, maybe we'll have a reserve bank and keep.

He wants a pretty much.

Wait, he's asking Powell if he can have a printing press to print money.

Is that right?

Yes, Diet, it's hilarious.

The thirty minute call was zesty to say, all thirty minute.

Call man, that's who should be running the US government, is these pranksters?

Because it's pretty good.

I was really happy to talk to you.

And that was it.

And mind you that this was a two week ordeal of setting this up.

According to the documents the federal least, there was never once a moment where anyone said, you know, hey, let's check out the email addresses or or you know, have our security team, you know, confirm any of this.

It was just through email setting it up.

It was pretty easy.

So no one on Powell's staff has ever seen the movie Borat?

Come on that this is a fan.

You think they're sitting around watching Borat?

I mean somebody should.

Then three days after the meeting, that's when the unraveling began, which you'll hear all about after the break.

It's six fifty nine am on January twenty seventh, twenty twenty three.

That's when a message lights up deer predacted.

President Zelenski would like to thank Chair Powell once again for this important conversation for us and express gratitude for his professionalism.

He has a small request.

Could you connect us with Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen so that President Zelenski could discuss the economic situation with hurt.

President Zelenski would like to hold this conversation informally, without the attention of the press.

Therefore, we thought that through you it would be fast and confidential.

The assistant did as requested and shared Yellen's contact information.

I can't wait to hear how that went over.

Then, a couple of weeks later, on February tenth, something appeared to have spooked Powell's assistant.

They emailed a person in Leguard's office at the European Central Bank to ask about Timyshenko's initial outreach.

Dear redacted, I just want to confirm that the email below Sea Trail is a legitimate email from you, and that a phone call with President Zelensky did occur from your office.

Best regards, redacted.

Then fifteen minutes later, Leguard's office responded, as read by Adam Gilbert de redacted, and it sure didn't quell anyone's anxiety.

She was a bit harry.

We were in touch with mister Timoshenko and a video call between President Zelenski and Madame mcguard took place on sixth January.

But in the meantime they explained that they'd recently learned that Timoshenko had resigned from this position and shared a Wikipedia link to prove it.

Apparently he left office on January twenty third, the day before the Powell meeting.

They had since heard from Timoshenko or someone claiming to be him, which raised some alarm bells.

So I assume this is not true, seeing that mister Timoshenko now left the office of President Zelensky.

In all the above, I would be extra cautious when handling his request.

Kind regards, redacted.

Oh, so in other words, Leguard's office isn't sure if they spoke to the real Timoshenko correct.

Seven minutes later, Powell's assistant wrote back.

Thanks redacted.

This is helpful.

You can almost feel the panic beginning to set in.

What is it that raised suspicions?

Do we know?

And it wasn't for example, could you please send us a printing press so we could print it balance.

Or build a Federal Reserve bank in Ukraine.

That wasn't what tipped it off, because they already gave over Yellen's contact information after that, so it must have been something after that.

Have you ever had that moment where suddenly, like an antenna just goes up, It just suddenly hits you like, was this all a ruse?

And that's how I imagine this assistant was feeling, just I've been duped.

Maybe that really wasn't a Nigerian prince?

Yeah, exactly exactly.

On the same day as the email exchange to the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors lodged a complaint with the agency's Office of Inspector General.

Four days later, on February fourteenth, they launched an investigation in part to sniff out an imposter.

That question would answer itself.

I'm glad you've made time to speak to me.

On April twenty six, the video appeared on Rootube.

Is it Russian YouTube?

I mean that's what it sounds like, exactly.

I got it.

I got it right to see.

They'd never fool me.

Your opinion is really important for me, So I would like to ask you, what does your.

Use turns out?

The impostors were two well known pranksters nicknamed Vivan and Lexis.

They've been pulling stunts to embarrass world leaders for years.

I love it.

In twenty seventeen, they impersonated another Ukrainian official on a call with then Congressman Adam Schiff Okay, what's the nature of the com from and convinced him that Putin was blackmailing Trump to cancel Russian sanctions.

Well, there were pictures of naked Trump.

Okay shifts.

People who said they thought the call was bogus told the number of news outlets that they reported the call to law enforcement.

The prankster struck again in twenty twenty.

My friend as singer Billie Eilish and rapper Kenny West are also fans of you.

They got Bernie Sanders by posing as Greta Thunberg and her father, saying they had some creative ways to endorse his campaign.

They would like to do a cool rap.

Rap music is popular now.

Rap music is very popular.

It's really very Sanders saying that is.

The Sanders campaign didn't comment on the authenticity of the call, but Vavana and Lexis had a hot streak of posing as Zelenski.

As your fun is Dumbledore Gay.

In twenty twenty two, they called JK Rowling.

I ordered that our fighters right avocada afradavra.

Yeah, yeah, on the on the missiles that we will launch it.

So how do you like this joke?

I love the joke.

I love the joke.

A spokesperson said, Rolling was a victim of a distasteful hoax.

Can we put in some audio of with Zile actually sounds like am I crazy?

The guy doesn't sound anything like him at all?

Okay, well, here's the real Zolensky.

That's said the biggest donata of support and of peace.

We have to be very open to understand how to stop the war.

Does not sound like Zelenski.

I haven't seen anything like this, And the reality is we were never supposed to see this, right, you know, this was supposed to be a private conversation with who Powell fought was Zolensky.

So what these pranctures throw out there publicly was something we were not supposed to get any insight to.

The video went viral, and when the news made it to the US, other journalists inundated the FED spokesperson with questions, I wanted to verify a Bloomberg report and see if you had a statement about January with Russian plans.

For the most part, the spokesperson brushed the incident off.

She told one Fox reporter that this happened to number of officials, including Leguard.

So they did get Leguard.

They did a video of the pranksters posing as Zelensky, dropped a month before the Powell video.

Leguard didn't seem to make any public comments about it, though, okay, continue, The FED spokesperson added, quote, I really hope that Fox Business might decide not to give fraudulent hoaxes more attention and legitimacy by further spreading their work.

And what happened?

Did Fox refrain from doing a story?

Oh, of course not everyone reported on this.

Beyond that, there wasn't much more to learn about the issue until I got the documents.

Do you want to know what they said?

Mat Yes.

In November twenty twenty three, the Inspector General issued their report.

Do you usually find that igs are like on the more generous side of how much they'll give you versus how much they'll withhold?

Well, it depends on the IG which agency you're dealing with.

Keep in mind, and one of the second Trump administration's first moves was firing the Inspectors General from a bunch of departments and agencies.

But for this request and a lot of others, I filed.

The Federal Reserve has been transparent in terms of what their IG will disclose.

What they uncovered wasn't exactly espionage, but it was a stark reality that all it takes to trick what we hope is a secure institution the United State Central Banking System is charm timing and a thimble of plausible deniability to slip past the gate.

The purpose of the investigation was to determine if any quote, criminal statutes, regulations, or agency policies within were violated.

This was an embarrassing breach.

So the questions are, how did it happen, who approved it?

Where warning signs missed?

The Inspector General got to work, not with flashing lights or ray jackets, but with something more bureaucratic and arguably more invasive, email, lots of it.

They pulled the thread back to January tenth, twenty twenty three, to the very first message that arrived at the FED on behalf of the impersonator.

Then they cast a wide net.

Anyone who touched the meeting, scheduled it, heard about it, mentioned it in a reply, all had their inbox pulled into the drag net.

Behind the scenes, eleven employees across three departments were summoned for interviews, including Chair Powell himself.

The names of some others are redacted, but the bewilderment wasn't because after all of that, investigators found quote no violations of law, regulation or policy associated with this matter.

Sounds a bit like nothing to see here, right.

Law and regulation?

I could see that.

How is there not a policy that was violated here?

Like, isn't there a policy that's like don't give interviews with people that aren't really.

Who they say to be.

Well, here's the real issue.

It's on clear if there were any protocols in place to prevent this from happening.

The report is detached and bureaucratic, making you read between the lines quite a bit.

It passively identifies major vulnerabilities without naming them as failures, and there were many failures.

Through sounds like it.

Let's take the emails.

While those interview told OIG investigators that quote attention to detail regarding incoming email is crucial end quote.

I'm not so sure about that.

I mean, the email addresses are amazing.

What are they?

The email addresses are Office dot President at UKR dot net dot net and airmac at Zolensky dot team.

Have you ever had those like phishing exercises to make sure that you're not fish right?

And they always like, you know, check those check those domain names.

So they're just getting emails from what they think are the Ukrainian government or Ukrainian government officials from dot team and at UKR dot net.

Official government email accounts generally don't reside on a dot net or dot team domain.

Right, They reside on personal signal accounts, as we all know.

Right, But you see, the report doesn't even explicitly discuss this email oversight.

I just love this part of the report.

It says staff members are taking a closer look at senders, email addresses and verifying contacts as necessary.

That tells me absolutely nothing.

That's that's already It says nothing, but it's also says everything, because, Hey, the Board of Governors is saying the Federal Reserve Board that they're going to start taking closer look at senders, email addresses and verifying contacts is necessary.

I'm assuming they haven't been doing that previously, but clearly they were not doing that previously.

So that's saying, like, we're going to start doing things that have been recommended for the last thirty years in dealing with the Internet.

Now, whose job was it to verify the contact?

Investigators learned that when the impersonator reached out to Powell's assistant, quote, no single person or group was solely assigned to verify the identity of foreign individuals who contact the board to request to communicate with board members or officials.

The reason they don't usually have to.

Powell has quote longstanding relationships with his international counterparts, and one on one communications tend to be with individuals well known to him.

Yeah, like, so, what why does this matter?

This is not about foreign contacts.

This could have been anything, right, This could have been Fox News is reaching out, or this could have been like the head of some US bank.

This has zero to do with the fact that the scammers were not based in the US or that they pretended to be somebody not in the US.

They're completely missing what the issue is.

I think, yeah, I mean, they could have been fished by any right.

Shouldn't the question just have been, like, do they have procedures to ensure that like they're not getting fished or they're not getting scammed, or that they, you know, generally ensure that a purported center is the real center, not specifically to only when it's like foreign leaders of other countries.

That just seems like a way that they could dodge like the real question and just be, oh, well, this like super specific thing, like they you know, this hasn't come up before.

Instead, FED staff relied on the exchange with the European Central Bank at the bottom of the email thread as verification enough that the request from the impostor was legit.

Generally, when foreign officials do reach out, FED staff are supposed to contact the Treasury department, which the fed's International Finance Division did do.

No one raised any concerns, and quote all felt comfortable with Chair Powell meeting the individual because Le Guard at the European Central Bank recently had a conversation with the same person.

But that process doesn't involve verifying the identity of the person asking to talk to Powell.

The FED also doesn't have a process to loop in external agencies such as the embassy's, Department of State or the White House to verify the identity of a request.

According to the records.

Yes, Matt, the entire show is about records.

I'm just making sure the listener is following.

Nor are internal security and intelligence departments regularly involved with vetting communications between the FED and foreign officials.

This all feels like if you were making people like do an online training about email security.

This would be like the one that's like obviously wrong when you see what the other ones are right.

This is a federal reserve and it was stunning to see how the security vulnerabilities reached all the way, you know, right to Powell's store.

So Chair Powell stated that International Finance is responsible for ensuring that foreign officials requesting to communicate are properly verified and vetted.

Powell's throwing, you know, the International Finance Division under the bus chair.

Powell reiterated that this one on one meeting with the Zelenski impersonator was extremely unusual, given that nearly all of his communications are with people he is already deeply familiar with.

So he's saying his communications are all people he's deeply familiar I guess if he had any familiarity with Zelenski, then he would have recognized it was obviously not Zolenski's.

Voice, right.

But speaking of what Powell heard, let's get into what happened on the video call itself after the break.

Okay, so Matt about the video.

It's worth mentioning that the report doesn't explicitly say what Powell was looking at, which spares him some embarrassment.

Vovan Alexis have been known to u his deep fakes, but it's unclear if that's the case in this instance.

What Powell did recognize is that Zelenski was surprisingly better at English than he expected and appeared to be reading from a script.

Investigators found that the impersonator did not ask for any money, papers, documents, or other things.

Of value during the conversation.

Anit wait, wait, hold on a second, that is so clearly wrong, right.

Yeah, I think I think that that's like it asked for a printing press that it's not true, and basically essentially said, can you build a bank, a federal reserve bank in Ukraine?

But this is where it gets serious.

There's a question of whether or not Powell had disclosed potentially confidential Federal Open Market Committee information to the Zelenski impersonator, particularly because Powell talked about interest rates.

This is what you asked about earlier.

The answer, it depends on who you ask.

One person interviewed said Powell's statement quote give at least an appearance of looking like confidential information.

But Powell disagreed.

So let's think about what he said.

The market is already pricing in two more quarter percentage point rate hikes.

As far as the market expectation goes.

That's true, but it's what he says next.

We'll look around after we make those two and we'll say, you know, should we do any more?

Powell told the IG he didn't think his comments quote met the definition of confidential information because of the broad market expectation that at least two interest rate increases were going to occur, which the IG corroborated.

Now, does that mean that Powell had said that before or that it's no big deal because everyone was already assuming that to be the case, because it'll seem like a little bit different to me.

Yeah, I mean it was essentially that there was an expectation, based on the climate, that at least two rate increases were going to happen.

All right, now, I'm going to tell you why this pisses me off, because if you try to get anything out of the FED under Foya, it has already been publicly said, they will tell you to off.

Like they're not going to give you anything.

They're gonna say that anything that the chairs ever said can move markets, and so like we're not gonna tell you what time that meeting started or whether they served coffee.

They will give you nothing at all if you make a flayer request on the theory that it will all these bad things will happen.

But if I'm hearing you right, Powell said something to these impersonators that he had not publicly said before.

But they're saying it's not a big deal because it's what everybody thought was gonna happen anyway.

Do I have that just about right?

Yeah, that's pretty much about right.

You could say that he's confirming the market's expectation, and at this time, the Federal Reserve had not publicly announced a commitment to implement two additional quarter percentage point interest rate hikes.

But the IG didn't take issue with this specific statement, probably because even though Powell's comments gave the appearance that he might have disclose confidential information, the chair has quote the authority to upclass or down classify FLMC information at any time.

So, in other words, even though he may have disclosed non public info, he's got the authority to classify it or reveal it if he wants to.

He has that unilateral authority to do that.

I can think of at least one powerful government official who would very much subscribe to the view that he could say and do whatever he wants with any documents, because he is the authority to do the same thing.

While the meeting was preceded by quote a rare set of factors end quote, including Powell taking the call from his home due to illness, the IG concluded that nothing illegal took place.

I'm going to say this too about inspectors general, and I mean no offense to any inspectors general, but the incentives would seem to be such that you want to show that you like found something wrong, but you also don't want to blow up the whole federal government.

It's such an odd office.

It's like part of the federal government, but it's supposed to like ca all out wrongdoing by the federal government.

But I'm sort of skeptical how much it wants to like really really take that on.

I don't know what do you think, Jason.

They will reach conclusions, they will make a referral or recommend an action.

Right in this case, you know what they said was they found no violations of law, regulation, or policy associated with this matter.

Right.

The bottom line is this, They're not going to say, you guys are a bunch of idiots.

Get your together.

I'm not saying that they should be going out of their way to like publicly humiliate anybody or grandstand or get about a soapbox.

But I think that there can be a tendency, or at least the effect of burying the reality of it in a bunch of bureaucratic sounding stuff that really kind of takes away from the public really understanding and appreciating the full ramifications of what happened.

That's why I'm here, Matt, so I can help them appreciate what happened.

I always forget it, but thank you for reminding me.

If if we had excellent government in America, you and I would both have to find other jobs.

Right.

I don't know what else I would do except slang records.

You could live up your T shirt collection for like, yeah, easily three or four years.

Have to sell some charts.

So how could this have been prevented?

Powell says the simple fix would entail an individual from the board calling the relevant embassy to verify the contact.

I mean the way that it's written.

You know you're reading it.

It's so dry.

But just think of that.

Powell's like, I know how we can resolve this in the future.

Just call the embassy to see if that person actually sent the email.

Now we have to give credit where credit is due, because someone did call the Ukrainian embassy, just not Powell staff that someone was in the Treasury Department and when they called quickly they had their answer.

Presidence Lensky never requested a meeting but that didn't happen until February eighth, two thousand, in twenty three.

By then it was too late.

The joke was on the FED.

So there's your answer, Matt.

What spook Pal's assistant?

None other than a little bit of due diligence that should have been done well before the meeting.

But they wait, They didn't do it until they reached out after after We reached out to the Federal Reserve for comment about this episode, but as of this recording, the agency has not responded.

So what's your take on all this?

The meeting revealed a break down an operational security and a need to overhaul security protocols across the board, but the IG makes no recommendations, and that makes me question if the scope of the investigation was too narrowly defined by did anyone violate existing rules?

The report does say that other internal agencies were also looking into this, but records responsive to that weren't in this batch of records or released to me more than a year after the incident.

This report is not instill a lot of confidence in the public that the FED took serious that it lacked elementary safeguards to prevent a massive breach by a foreign actor that could have had national security consequences.

This is the kind of thing that drives people nuts about the federal government.

Like you made a mistake.

Just admit I made a mistake.

I get it.

This is what I'm gonna do different next time.

But not sort of like, oh well, other people screwed up too.

We're like here's my excuse, or like this isn't really that big of a deal.

Just own it for like five seconds and then we can all move on.

Like people smart enough to see through that and it makes them really mad.

I agree.

Is this inspector general one of the inspector generals who's since been fired?

Nope, he wasn't touched.

So that was hoping.

Maybe we could we could get the on the pod talk about it.

But right, maybe we could, maybe we can get Chairman Powell on the pod.

Would you like to come on and discuss this report?

We are who we say we are.

Oh that's good.

So that's it for this one, but not for Powell and me in a sense.

We end where we be.

Yeah.

On April morning in twenty twenty five, Jason Leopold was sitting up in bed.

Have n't brushed my teeth.

I'm still there.

Scrolling the headlines when a story caught his eye.

And I was like, oh, that's funny.

I gotta follow a foyer.

So I followed a request with the Federal Reserve for all adacted because it's classified.

Ooh, I can hardly wait for the records to come back.

Jason, Well, Matt, I'll let you know what the records say.

And a few years from Bloomberg and No Smiling, this is Disclosure.

The show is hosted by Matt Topic and me Jason Leopold.

It's produced by Heather Schroing and Sean Cannon for No Smiling.

Our editor for Bloomberg is Jeff Grocott.

Our executive producers for Bloomberg are Sage Bauman and me Jason Leopold, and our executive producers for No Smiling are Sean Cannon, Heather Schrowing, and Matt Topic.

The Disclosure theme song is by Nick, with additional music by Nick and Epidemic Sound.

Sound design and mixing is by Sean Cannon.

The emails in this episode were read by Josh Gondelman, Katherine Blandford, and Adam Gilbert.

For more Transparency News and important document Thumps.

You can subscribe to my Weeklyfoya Files newsletter at Bloomberg dot com slash Foya Files.

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