https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ ... ross-hotelIG Confirms Trump’s Involvement in FBI Headquarters Project Across From His Hotel
President Donald Trump was more intimately involved in the debate over relocating the FBI headquarters than Congress was told, a new inspector general report finds.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat representing parts of Northern Virginia, said the report he requested from the General Services Administration IG confirmed his suspicions that the president was involved in the decision to scrap plans to vacate the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, and move the agency to a campus location in either the Maryland or Virginia suburbs.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” Connolly said in a statement. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
The report criticized as incomplete and potentially misleading congressional testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee by GSA Administrator Emily Murphy regarding the change of direction.
The exchange in question involved questioning from Rep. Mike Quigley. The Illinois Democrat is the ranking member on the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee.
“Murphy told us that she believed her answers to Representative Quigley were truthful,” the report said. “We agree that her responses were literally true.”
But beyond that, the IG found significant issues with the scope of the testimony, since she did not mention conversations with top Trump administration officials, including the president himself.
“However, we found that because she omitted any mention in her answers of her discussions with [Chief of Staff John] Kelly, [Office of Management and Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney, and the President during the decision-making process for the Revised FBI Headquarters Plan, her testimony was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project,” the Monday report said.
The IG report confirms the existence of direct interaction with Trump about the project.
“Murphy told us that she attended two meetings about the FBI project at the White House on January 24, 2018. The first meeting occurred in Kelly’s office, and immediately preceded the second meeting,” the report said. “The second meeting was in the Oval Office with the President.”
Also at that meeting to update Trump on the decision-making process were Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote to Murphy earlier this month to try to give her an opportunity to clarify earlier Senate testimony on the same topic.
The report indicates that while GSA employees confirmed the White House meetings with Trump, they received instructions not to divulge any statements Trump made at those meetings.
In addition to raising more questions about the level of Trump’s personal involvement in a project that could easily affect the value of his nearby hotel at the Old Post Office Building, the IG report casts doubt on cost estimates provided to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee back in February, which suggested that a move to the suburbs would actually be more expensive than rebuilding on the same land.
So the President Of The United States intervenes personally to stop a government building project that could have negatively impacted one of his personal business interests, and then he seeks to cover up his involvement by instructing the government employees he intervened with not to cooperate with government investigators...
In the Trump Era, we call that "Tuesday"...
