Newly released emails show President Trump personally intervened to stop the FBI from moving its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to the Maryland or Virginia suburbs.
Democrats in Congress were quick to pounce on the news.
They claim the FBI not moving helps Trump’s bottom line by reducing competition for his flagship hotel property located in the Old Post Office building across the street from the current FBI building.
The emails between officials at the General Services Administration, which oversees government-owned properties, and the FBI show that the decision to stop the long-running plan to move FBI headquarters to the suburbs and sell the sprawling, brutalist J. Edgar Hoover Building to developers for a mixed-use development came directly from Trump.
In the emails, officials discuss “what was decided in the meeting with POTUS,” “the President’s instructions,” and “direction from WH” following a January 2018 meeting about the plan.
Back in 2013, Trump said he’d be interested in acquiring the land the FBI building sits on should the bureau move out of Washington.
As president, he’s reportedly been obsessed with the building.
This revelation provides further problems for GSA Administrator Emily Murphy.
At a congressional oversight hearing in April, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) asked Murphy if the president was involved in the discussions to change the decade-old plan to relocate the FBI headquarters. Murphy said the decision came solely from the FBI.
That answer was “incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with White House officials in the decision-making,” an inspector general report into Murphy’s comments revealed in August.
Democrats on the committee argue that Trump had a clear interest in the FBI property being developed before he was President, but after he became President and was not allowed to invest in the project, his interest became ensuring no other developer could buy the property, convert it and compete with the Trump hotel.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the “House Democrats have it all wrong.”
“The President wanted to save the government money and also the FBI leadership did not want to move its headquarters,” she said in a statement.
A financial analysis conducted by the GSA’s inspector general, however, concluded that constructing a new FBI building in downtown DC “would actually be more costly” than relocating the bureau.
There are legitimate questions of whether rebuilding on the existing site really makes that much sense, considering costs in surrounding area could be lower and provide more space.