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Yellen met with Medley Global Advisors in June
2012, she said in a letter, months before the firm unveiled
details of a September Fed meeting a day ahead of the
publication of the central bank's own record of the discussions.
The Justice Department is investigating Medley over a possible
leak of information from the Fed.
"Nothing Medley Global Advisors reported in October ... could
have been conveyed in June, and let me assure you that, in any
case, I did not convey any confidential information," Yellen
said in the letter to two Republican members of the House of
Representatives, Jeb Hensarling and Sean Duffy.
Yellen said she would also disclose the names of other staff
members who had been in touch with the firm.
Yellen in March said that the central bank's internal watchdog,
the office of the inspector general, was investigating the
matter. She also said that she did not know where the
information had come from.
At the policy-setting meeting, Fed officials laid the groundwork
for the massive bond-buying stimulus they were to roll out later
that year. Early knowledge of that discussion could have given
traders an unfair edge.
The probe comes as politicians such as Hensarling boost pressure
on the Fed to tell the public more about its inner workings,
including its decisions about monetary policy.
Jeb Hensarling, head of the House Financial Services Committee,
wrote to Yellen in March to express his concern about lack of
response to an earlier letter by Duffy, who heads the
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
In that letter, Hensarling said that an internal probe by the
Fed's general counsel was dropped at the request of several
members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group that
sets the central bank's interest rate policy, and that a
criminal investigation into the matter was pending.
(Reporting by Douwe Miedema and Jonathan Spicer; editing by
Andrew Hay)
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