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Democrats accuse President Trump of intervening in decisions about the fate of the FBI headquarters in Washington to protect his hotel on the street.
Cliff Owen / AP
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Cliff Owen / AP
Democrats accuse President Trump of intervening in decisions about the fate of the FBI headquarters in Washington to protect his hotel on the street.
Cliff Owen / AP
President Trump intervened in a large federal building project to protect the business of his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, a group of House Democrats announced Thursday.
Democrats say Trump wants to demolish and rebuild the FBI headquarters, in order to preserve the government's ownership of the site and deny any potential competitors to the Trump International Hotel located in the former pavilion of the post office located on the street.
Democrats have called this an abuse of power and a violation of the rules that are supposed to protect such arrangements from any political influence.
Before Trump was elected, he had expressed interest in an earlier project involving the move of the FBI to a new site in suburban Maryland and the sale of his site located Pennsylvania Avenue to a private developer. This move transaction was abandoned last year.
"In view of the above, President Trump should have avoided any interaction or communication related to the FBI Headquarters project in order to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest," wrote the Democrat. "He should not have played any role in a determination that bears directly on his own financial interests with the Trump Hotel."
Officials of minority party committees and subcommittees led by Maryland representative Elijah Cummings on Thursday sent a letter to the Administrator of the General Service Administration asking for more information. information about Trump's role in history.
Pamela Dixon, GSA press secretary, said that Cummings and the Democrats put the blame in the wrong place: the FBI made decisions about the headquarters project, not the president.
"As GSA and the FBI have already testified, the FBI management team has made the decision to keep its headquarters at the current location of Pennsylvania Avenue," said Dixon.
She added: "A number of e-mails referenced in today's congressional letter have gone out of context and refer to the project's funding approach, and No to the location decision The suggestions that these emails indicate presidential involvement in the location decision are inaccurate. "
The White House had not tackled the FBI headquarters project on Thursday afternoon, but it acknowledged Trump's interest in the project because, said Sarah Sanders, press secretary, at Axios, the president "is still interested in construction because he knows it better than anyone else and has done very well in this area ".
Hoover Headquarters
The issue is the FBI headquarters building, J. Edgar Hoover, whose exterior is familiar to millions of people on television and in the movies – but is in ruins and considered obsolete.
FBI leaders dreamed of escaping to a new, larger location outside the district, perhaps in Prince George County, Maryland, where the office could have accommodated more employees in a facility ultramodern of more than $ 3.5 billion.
This would have released the former Pennsylvania Avenue site, which Trump and his daughter Ivanka had planned to develop, following their Trump hotel located in the Old Post Office Pavilion. Then, in the summer of 2017, following the dismissal of Trump by FBI President James Comey, the government announced that the FBI relocation project had been canceled.
The GSA – which manages the buildings and properties of the federal government as a whole – said it did not want to continue the FBI project without full funding in advance.
Local and congressional Democrats, who had hoped for economic revival in the outlying areas of Washington, DC, were furious.
In February, GSA and the FBI presented a new plan to retain the Pennsylvania Avenue property, but to demolish the J. Edgar Hoover building and replace it with a new office structure.
GSA Administrator Emily Murphy told Congress that Trump was not involved in these decisions, but Democrats accused Thursday that her team and staff had met with the President and White House officials about the change in direction of the FBI project. .
On January 25, Cummings and the Democrats quoted Murphy's chief of staff as saying to a White House official: "The GSA administrator informed the president yesterday. [Murphy]Deputy [Attorney General Rod Rosenstein] and director of the FBI [Christopher Wray] and signed on this way before. "
Now, Cummings and Democrats say that they want more documents and information from the early part of the administration, including before the announcement of the abandonment of the move of the FBI in Prince George County and "documents and communications between officials of the Trump Organization and GSA" prior to Trump's election.
Other signatories of the letter included Peter DeFazio, Representative of Oregon, Gerry Connolly, Representative of Virginia, Mike Quigley, Representative of Illinois, and Dina Titus, Representative of Nevada.
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