Claire Jones

And now that the probe looks as though it's gone away, they're likely to support Walsh.

There's 53 Republicans in the Senate at the moment.

So it looks like Walsh will pass the crucial hurdle of 51 quite easily.

So the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Janine Pirro's remarks on Friday did raise a little bit of concern because she did mention in a post on social media site X that she will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.

The sense we've got from remarks that Tillis made yesterday was that he'd had assurances from the DOJ

that the only way the probe would be reopened was if the Fed's internal inspector general recommended that it do so.

So he seems to have been assured enough by conversations with the DOJ to think that they will not reopen the probe, despite there being some grey area created by Pirro's remarks on Friday.

Well, I think, as you say, Walsh is taking the helm at a time when the Fed is under the sort of political pressure, which I think it's never really experienced.

We've seen the attempt to take legal action against Powell.

We've also seen the US president attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she also denies.

And Cook remains at the Fed.

However, you could argue that the resistance of Powell and Cook and the sense in which the Fed has had some success in the courts does provide cover for Walsh in that, in a sense, he is going to have a few legal protections that we now know about that maybe we weren't quite aware of at this time last year.

Thanks, Sonia.

Hello, Mark.

Well, as one would expect, given the current environment and all of Donald Trump's calls for the Fed to cut rates and threats to fire current Fed Chair Jay Powell and his colleagues, the hearing was very much focused on whether or not Kevin Walsh can ensure the US Federal Reserve, the most important central bank in the world, can remain independent from the White House.

Walsh was pretty adamant that it could and also claimed that the president had never asked him to cut interest rates.

So Walsh is a very rich man.

We know from his financial disclosures that all Senate nominated officials have to submit that he has assets worth at least $130 million.

The big questions were exactly what are some of those assets?

A lot of what he holds is confidential.