A watchdog has found that former President Donald Trump is innocent of allegations made by Democrats that he meddled in plans to move the FBI’s headquarters.
After a lengthy review, a Department of Justice watchdog has found that President Donald Trump didn’t improperly influence the FBI’s decision to keep its headquarters in downtown Washington rather than move it to suburban locations in Maryland or Virginia.
“With regard to possible influence by then-President Trump or the White House, we found no evidence that the FBI’s decisions were based on improper considerations or motives,” the Justice Department inspector general wrote in a report released on Oct. 24, after a four-year investigation.
Roughly 20 years ago, the FBI concluded that its Washington-based headquarters—the J. Edgar Hoover Building—was no longer meeting the needs of the agency in terms of security and supporting the needs of its workforce.
Starting in 2014, the government began to explore the possibility of transferring ownership of the current FBI headquarters land to a developer, who in exchange would build a new facility in the city’s suburbs in a deal dubbed an “exchange procurement.”
However, the General Services Administration (GSA) found that the value of the existing site wouldn’t cover the cost of a new facility, and so the Office of Management and Budget asked Congress for money to cover the difference.
Canceled Plans
In July 2017, the GSA announced that it had canceled plans to go ahead with the exchange procurement deal because Congress didn’t appropriate all of the requested funds. This prompted the FBI to scrap plans for a suburban campus and instead recommend that the J. Edgar Hoover Building be demolished and a new headquarters constructed in its place.
However, some Democrats saw a conspiracy afoot. They accused President Trump of meddling in that decision, claiming in an October 2018 letter to the GSA that he did it to keep competitors away from his Washington-based commercial property, the Trump International Hotel.
They alleged that President Trump directly influenced the decision to scrap the suburban campus construction deal during a January 2018 meeting that included officials from the GSA, the FBI, and the White House.
By Tom Ozimek
