Federal Reserve governor Michael Barr said Thursday the Justice Department's criminal inquiry into the central bank — as well as the White House's accusations against Fed governor Lisa Cook — amount to "an assault on the independence of the Fed."

"I think these are just examples of the ways in which the independence of the Fed is being challenged," Barr told Yahoo Finance in an interview Thursday.

Despite the pressure, Barr said the Fed is "acting only for economic reasons. We are acting only according to our congressional mandate. That's to make sure that we have price stability and maximum employment. That's what we've been focused on all along, and that's what we will stay focused on."

News broke Sunday night that the Justice Department had served subpoenas on the Fed last Friday, specifically focused on Chair Jerome Powell's testimony before Congress about building renovations of the Fed's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

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Powell, with rare candor, responded with a video message that the criminal probe was not about his testimony but a new means of pressuring the central bank to lower interest rates as President Trump has repeatedly called for.

"The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President," Powell said in a recorded video.

On the policy front, Barr said benchmark interest rates are at the right level, equally balancing risks to inflation and the job market.

"A reasonable base case is that the labor market is continuing to stabilize, and that inflation will continue to come down to 2%," he said. "But there are risks to both sides of the mandate, given the low level of job creation risk to the employment side, given the potential persistence of inflation risk to the inflation side of the mandate."

Right now, Barr says the Fed is in the range of neutral — a level of interest rates designed to neither spur nor slow economic growth. The implication is that moving rates lower might make policy more accommodative.

He's taking a wait-and-see approach on further cuts and said he'll continue to assess the data.

"Until the spring, we're going to have effects of the government shutdown playing into biases in the data for technical reasons ... So we have to try and make adjustments for that," he said. "We need to treat the data, you know, with some caution. And that will play through really into the spring."

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Meanwhile, Trump is set to announce a new Fed chair soon, one who is expected to favor lower rates.

That has raised questions about how the dynamic will play out with the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates, and its ability to continue to act independently.

Barr says the FOMC is set up in such a way that a new incoming chair, like any chair, has to gain the trust and confidence of the entire committee to make policy changes.

"So the chair has to act based on data, has to act based on reasonable forecasts and an assessment of those risks in a way that convinces other members of the committee that moving or not moving is the right thing to do," Barr said. "So the checks and balances that are built into the system will keep the Fed independent and focused on our goals."

Jennifer Schonberger covers the Federal Reserve, Congress, the White House, the Treasury, the SEC, the economy, cryptocurrencies, and the intersection of Washington policy with finance. Follow her on X @Jenniferisms and on Instagram.

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