"The FBI needs a new building and we'll get it done," says Trump [View all]

[demmiblue]

"The FBI needs a new building and we'll get it done," says Trump - and with that, ends today's briefing

Link to tweet

A little background:

Trump’s Interference in the FBI Headquarters Relocation Plan

A plan to relocate the FBI headquarters to the Washington, D.C., suburbs was surprisingly scrapped in favor of the far costlier option of rebuilding at its existing site — which happens to sit a block away from the Trump International Hotel. American Oversight is investigating what influence the White House and the Trump Organization might have had over a decision that ensures a huge city block remains free of competition for the president’s hotel.

For more than a decade, the FBI sought congressional funding to move its headquarters from the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C., to the suburbs — a cost-saving plan that would address serious security concerns and free up prime downtown real estate. So when the Trump administration canceled the project in July 2017 and then seven months later announced plans to rebuild at the downtown site, which sits a block away from the Trump International Hotel, eyebrows rose.

In late summer 2018, after reports surfaced that President Donald Trump was personally involved in that decision, the inspector general of the General Services Administration found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy may have misled Congress earlier in the year about the extent of Trump’s involvement — and that the agency had not accurately estimated the costs of the rebuilding.

The inspector general report also mentioned three meetings GSA officials had with the White House about the rebuilding plan. During a December 2017 meeting, Murphy met with then–White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Mick Mulvaney, who was then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, where she may have been told that the president wanted to be updated on the project. A month later, during another White House meeting, Murphy met with Kelly and Mulvaney, as well as with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, in Kelly’s office, before moving to the Oval Office to meet with Trump. The third meeting occurred in June 2018 at the White House, and included Murphy, the president, Kelly, Rosenstein, Wray, and other officials, including OMB’s deputy director.

https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/trumps-interference-in-the-fbi-headquarters-relocation-plan

Scoop: Trump's obsession with the "terrible" FBI building

Trump is obsessed with the FBI building. For months now, in meetings with White House officials and Senate appropriators intended to discuss big-picture spending priorities, the president rants about the graceless J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C.

Behind the scenes: In the midst of one rant about the FBI, he lit into the building. "Even the building is terrible," he observed to an Axios source. "It's one of the brutalist-type buildings, you know, brutalist architecture. Honestly, I think it's one of the ugliest buildings in the city."

Another source said he was dead opposed to plans to move it out of D.C. "This is prime real estate, right on Pennsylvania Avenue," he said. "This is a great address. They need to stay there. But it needs a total revamp."
That source said Trump told Chief of Staff John Kelly he wants to oversee the project at an excruciating level of detail: the cost per square foot, the materials used, the renovation specs, etc. He's treating it like it's a Trump Organization construction project, the source added.

https://www.axios.com/donald-trump-obsession-fbi-building-headquarters-65d36fb9-b1a2-42ca-8cbd-3dbbe59de907.html