European Central Bank head resigns, allowing EU leaders to choose successor before French election

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde will resign nine months before the end of her term, a move that opens the way for European leaders to choose a successor ahead of France's presidential election next year.

Lagarde, 70, will leave Feb. 7, the ECB said Thursday. Her eight-year term was to end Oct. 31, 2027.

The resignation opens the way for complex political horse trading over her successor and replacements for two other top officials who are leaving next year. The ECB president leads the bank's governing council, which sets interest rates for the 21 countries that use the euro currency, affecting borrowing costs for everything from house purchases to new factories and serving as the European Union's chief crisis fighter in times of economic and financial turbulence.

“It has been a great pride and a huge privilege to serve this institution,” Lagarde said in a video message posted on X. “I think that I leave this institution with a sense of good work done and an ECB that is fit for the future.”

Asked about her reasons at a news conference following the bank's decision to leave rates unchanged, she said that she wanted to be freed from the obligation of political neutrality that comes with being ECB head.

“I want to, have the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, and the freedom to engage on matters that are not monetary policy matters,” she said. “I don’t think that I can be comfortable in that neutrality at the present time." She didn't elaborate.

The announcement was expected following speculation that Lagarde would leave early to enable EU leaders to choose a successor while pro-EU French President Emmanuel Macron is still in office. That would guard against the possibility that right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen might win the election and influence the choice.

“That she leaves early is no surprise and does not change the outlook for ECB policies,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank.

European Council President Antonio Costa said that the selection process “will be initiated today and will proceed without delay.”

The term of another top ECB official — chief economist Philip Lane — is to end May 31, while another member of the ECB's executive board, Isabel Schnabel, is resigning Jan. 3 to move to the International Monetary Fund. European leaders are expected to work out a package deal to apportion the three vacancies among member countries in a complex round of political bargaining.

EU leaders would likely seek to reach agreement on all three posts before a summit meeting on Dec. 17-18, said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank.

He said that leading candidates for Lagarde's job appeared to be former Netherlands central bank head Klaas Knot and Spain’s Pablo Hernandez de Cos, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements. The BIS is an international organization of central banks.

“The European Union is trying to guard itself at least somewhat against the risk that right-wing Marine Le Pen may win the French presidential election in April-May 2027,” Schmieding wrote in an email. “Lagarde’s successor will still be appointed while the staunchly pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron still resides in the Elysee Palace.”

Lagarde, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, was appointed in 2011 to succeed Mario Draghi. A key decision during her tenure came in 2020, when the bank deployed 1.35 trillion euros ($1.5 trillion) in emergency stimulus in the form of bond purchases to keep the COVID-19 pandemic from drying up credit for the economy.

The bank's ability to act swiftly — in contrast to the often drawn-out negotiations among the 27 European Union national governments — has given it a leading role in combating Europe-wide crises such as the pandemic and the peak period of the eurozone's debt crisis in 2010-2012. Most notably, Draghi's promise in 2012 to “do whatever it takes to preserve the euro” calmed bond market turmoil that raised fears the eurozone would break up.

Lagarde’s announcement overshadowed the bank’s decision Thursday to leave its interest rate benchmark unchanged at 2.5% despite annual inflation of 3.8% fed by high oil prices caused by the US-Iran war. High rates restrain inflation, which is above the bank’s target of 2%. However rising bond market rates are already tightening credit independent of the ECB, in effect doing the central bank’s job for it, analysts say.

Fog drifts by the European Central Bank, right, on the occasion of the announcement of the resignation of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Fog drifts by the European Central Bank on the occasion of the announcement of the resignation of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Fog drifts by the European Central Bank, right, on the occasion of the announcement of the resignation of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

FILE - President of European Central Bank Christine Lagarde addresses the media during a press conference after an ECB's governing council meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense lawyers urged a federal judge Thursday to dismiss a criminal complaint charging two former FBI officials with making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, calling the case an overtly political prosecution aimed at placating President Donald Trump.

The arguments capped a days-long hearing in which lawyers for the former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, sought to cast the case — one in a series of high-profile Justice Department actions before next week's midterm voting — as legally defective and tainted by politics.

The hearing included testimony that the investigation was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel and that it was opened on the heels of a primetime election security speech by Trump in which the Republican rehashed long-running grievances about his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

“A political prosecution is always going to make for a shaky foundation for a criminal case,” said Mary Dohrmann, a lawyer for Floris. She, along with Benavides, is accused of falsely downplaying their knowledge of a laptop that the Justice Department says Hunter Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in 2019 and that was publicized a year later in a revelation that shook the final weeks of the presidential race.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui did not immediately rule on the defense lawyers' request.

A dismissal of the complaint would not prevent the Justice Department from attempting to get an indictment, but that could be a challenge given that grand juries in the nation's capital have repeatedly refused to approve charges in politically sensitive cases. Even if the judge sustains the complaint, prosecutors would presumably still need to secure a grand jury indictment for the case to proceed.

The alleged false statements were made in 2023 before the House Judiciary Committee as the Republican-led panel was conducting its own investigation into Hunter Biden. The complaint alleges that though the two officials downplayed their knowledge about the laptop, both participated in numerous discussions about it.

A Justice Department prosecutor, James Kirkpatrick, argued Thursday that the two officials — both leaders of a since-disbanded FBI task force set up to monitor foreign influence in elections — had a motive to minimize their knowledge about Hunter Biden and the laptop given that his father was president at the time of the questioning.

Kirkpatrick suggested the two may have been leery of discussing Hunter Biden and the laptop since, he said, the task force did not publicly correct a narrative from some Democrats and former intelligence officials that the laptop might have been connected to Russian disinformation. Trump's then-intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, said after the laptop was publicized that there were no signs of foreign involvement in any way.

“At the end of the day, the FITF got it wrong,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Task Force. “They didn’t quash the narrative that this laptop was the product of Russian disinformation. They didn't correct the record.”

Defense lawyers insisted that their clients did not lie and had no incentive to do so, and that any potentially false statement was not intentional and would have been the product of vague questioning or a faulty memory.

“There is absolutely zero proof that Mr. Benavides knew and remembered and misled. They have to prove that the statements were made intentionally and not the result of confusion, mistake, faulty or other innocent reasons," said Ron Safer, a lawyer for Benavides.

Safer disputed the prosecution’s suggestion of a motive, arguing that the Foreign Influence Task Force — which was shuttered by the Trump administration last year — never made an assessment on the authenticity of the laptop.

The case was filed more than a week before the midterm elections in an unusual mechanism. The Justice Department charged the two via a criminal complaint — which is more often used for instances when officials need to swiftly take someone into custody — rather than a grand jury indictment.

The hearing this week featured startling testimony from Bryan Witt, an FBI special agent who investigated the case. He said he regarded it as a “huge distraction” from his other work and appreciated that the investigation could be seen as political. He said that Patel had mandated the investigation and taken an unusual interest in it, requesting and receiving regular updates about it.

He also testified that the FBI had been directed to investigate Floris after a July primetime speech in which Trump amplified debunked theories about his 2020 election loss.

Among the grievances the White House raised at the time was a disputed FBI intelligence report about an alleged effort by China to influence the election on Biden's behalf. The memo was recalled after the FBI concluded that the information was not sufficiently corroborated. Floris has long been singled out for criticism from Trump's Republican allies for her role in that recall decision.

FILE - Hunter Biden arrives for a closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 28, 2024. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)