Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sarah Eisen with Carl Kintania and David Faber. Live as always from post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Do have some breaking news to begin the hour for you around the DOJ's investigation and to Fed Chair Powell. I did just speak with the former Federal Reserve Chair and former Treasury Secretary Janet

Yellen about all of this and she did not hold back.

Here's what she told me.

As far as the investigation, she did tell me that it was very chilling for Federal Reserve

independence.

She clearly thinks that this is political on the part of the

administration when it comes to investigating Fed Chair Powell. We talked about,

here's the quote, I find it extremely chilling for Fed independent.

We talked about how it appears to be that they're looking into some testimony from Fed Chair Powell before Senate

banking about the building, about everything with the cost overruns and how much the building

costs and everything. So here's what the former Fed Chair Yellen did tell me. She said,

knowing Powell as well as I do, the odds that he would have lied are zero. So I do believe they are going after him

because they want his seat and they want him gone. She did say as far as the market reaction,

I'm surprised that the market isn't concerned. It seems to me that the market should be more

concerned. I talked about some of the market reaction. Yes, we're seeing a bid for gold.

Yes, the dollar's a little bit weaker, but she thinks this is a real cause for concern here.

And then we talked a little bit more guys about other ways she's concerned about Fed independence.

She's really eagerly waiting to see what the Supreme Court decides on Lisa Cook, for instance.

And she also referenced this notion from the president that he has said about how the Fed should be cutting rates to lower payments for the federal government.

And here was the exact quote from former Fedshire Yellen.

You have a president that says the Fed should be cutting rates to lower payments on the federal debt.

She completely disagrees with that and says it is the road to a banana republic.

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