The Justice Department’s April 2026 closure of its criminal investigation into Chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony on Federal Reserve headquarters renovations—without filing any charges—has cemented trader consensus around a 97.5% probability that he will not be incarcerated before 2027. The probe, opened in late 2025 and focused on alleged misleading statements about a $2.5 billion project, ended amid judicial pushback and a lack of evidence, restoring the institutional norm that sitting Fed chairs operate with significant legal insulation from politically motivated actions. With Powell’s term ending and no active indictments or credible new allegations emerging in the subsequent weeks, market-implied odds reflect the high bar for prosecuting a central bank official on such grounds. Tail-risk scenarios, such as an unforeseen regulatory filing or last-minute political escalation before year-end, remain possible but face formidable procedural and evidentiary hurdles that have kept implied probabilities for a “Yes” outcome below 3%.