Tillis escalated his criticism of the DOJ's probe of the Powell Fed at a banking committee hearing on Tuesday, saying multiple senators who attended Powell's hearing last June have said they saw no crime. "The entire case against Powell is encapsulated in his answers to questions before this committee," Tillis said. "And now including the chair [Sen. Tim Scott], we have witnesses at the alleged scene of the crime having...all said that he was testifying, and we didn't see a crime." Tillis warned that if the Trump administration pursues such a "perjury trap," no one who testifies will want to answer questions candidly, instead deferring to lawyers. Hearings will turn into "that Chappelle skit on ‘I plead the fifth.’ ... Is that really the way we want oversight to go in the future?"

Tillis's full comments:

*Correction: on *Thursday*