The Justice Department will investigate the decision-making process behind keeping the FBI headquarters at its current location amid allegations from Democrats that the White House influenced the choice to benefit President Trump financially.
The Trump administration contends FBI leadership made the decision not to build a new bureau headquarters in the D.C. suburbs.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Tuesday the inquiry is in response to a May letter from Democratic House leaders.
“The review will include an examination of DOJ’s and FBI’s progress in its planning, their assessment and consideration of the previously proposed plan to move FBI Headquarters to a suburban location, and their assessment of the plan to demolish the J. Edgar Hoover Building and construct a new facility on that site,” Horowitz wrote.
House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings of Maryland and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio of Oregon were joined by Reps. Gerald Connolly of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada, and the four claimed the decision to keep the FBI headquarters in D.C., rather than following a plan to move the bureau’s headquarters to the suburbs in Maryland or Virginia that had been decades in the making, was motivated by Trump’s financial interests.
“The Trump Administration’s abrupt decision to abandon the long-standing relocation plan is of concern in light of the fact that many years before becoming President, Donald Trump expressed interest in the FBI headquarters moving out of Washington, D.C., so he could acquire the land on Pennsylvania Avenue and redevelop the property, which is directly across the street from the Trump International Hotel,” the House Democrats wrote. “However, after he was sworn in as President and became ineligible as a federal employee to obtain the property-he reportedly became ‘dead opposed’ to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted it was “absolutely the FBI’s view, the FBI’s choice, the FBI’s preference to build a new building at our current location” and not because of political pressure while testifying in front of a House committee in April.
“I took a very long, careful, thorough look, and it is the FBI’s view that the best balance of equities for the men and women of the FBI is to be here, downtown, ideally in our current location,” Wray said.
Wray said building in the same location rather than moving the bureau would help “make sure that our folks are within close proximity for the hundreds and hundreds of meetings that they have every day with their partners all within about a mile and a half of our current location.”
Wray also said keeping the FBI building in the heart of D.C. would also be “the best choice for the American people as well” because of the thousands of tourists who visit the FBI each day.
The inspector general of the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, released a report highlighting a number of meetings in 2017 and 2018 between top DOJ and FBI officials — including then-Deputy Director Rod Rosenstein and Wray — and White House officials about this issue, including a meeting in the Oval Office with Trump.
The GSA inspector general also scrutinized GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s meetings with White House officials and Trump. Murphy had testified to Congress about the GSA’s plans for the FBI building, and the watchdog claimed it “found that Murphy’s congressional testimony was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
Murphy insisted in congressional testimony in March that Wray decided not to move the FBI.
“I stand by my testimony that the senior leadership of the FBI made the decision to remain at the current Pennsylvania Avenue location,” he said.
But Cummings, DeFazio, Connolly, and Titus continue to claim that “the FBI has withheld key decision-making documents from Congress” and that “we have been left with many unanswered questions.”
