Treasury Department Staff Accuse Janet Yellen of Going MIA

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Officials at the Treasury Department are reportedly taking issue with their boss, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, being absent from work.

Yellen “is barely in the White House these days except for occasionally meeting with the president or for an occasional TV interview,” sources told Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino and Lydia Moynihan for a Monday report. They said Yellen’s deputies have also worked remotely during the pandemic, while low-level staffers have been required to continue booking it to the Treasury Department each day.

It isn’t clear why the 74-year-old Yellen hasn’t been coming into the office. A spokeswoman for the department refused to say whether she, like President Joe Biden, had been vaccinated for Covid-19. Biden received his second and final dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in January, prior to taking his oath of office.

The sources also groused that Yellen failed to fully participate in negotiations over the $1.9 trillion stimulus package making its way through Congress, leaving it instead to the White House, and suggested her absence contributed to the “drawn out nature of the negotiations.”

Yellen, who served previously as President Barack Obama’s Federal Reserve chair, took her position in January, six days after Biden entered office. She has delivered several interviews from her home in recent days, including one with The New York Times last month in which she warned against cryptocurrency as “highly speculative.” That remark briefly sent the market for bitcoin and other digital currencies tumbling.

Her predecessor, 58-year-old Steven Mnuchin, took the opportunity to draw a contrast between himself and Yellen, telling Fox that he worked closely on crafting a stimulus proposal prior to his departure. He said the department made it work by allowing a “limited number of people [to] come into U.S. Treasury throughout the operation to prepare and execute on the legislation,” and that they also “set up temperature checks and followed social distancing guidelines.”