CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

IG: Trump Involved in FBI HQ Project Near His Hotel

The report also accused the GSA of misleading Congress about the project’s cost.

An inspector general report found that the White House was “directly involved” in plans to rebuild the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters—which is across the street from President Trump’s namesake hotel in Washington, D.C. The Associated Press reports that the inspector general of the General Services Administration found that Trump participated in two meetings, one in January and another in June, about the headquarters. At the first meeting, attendees reportedly agreed to go forward with a plan that would “demolish the existing J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown Washington and build a new headquarters in the same spot.” The GSA was considering moving the FBI headquarters into the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, but that plan was ultimately scrapped. The IG report also found that the agency did not consider the increased costs of the “demolish and rebuild” plan, and that GSA administrator Emily Murphy did not mention the White House meetings to Congress. “The IG review acknowledges an indisputable fact: the Administrator’s congressional testimony was truthful,” the agency insisted in a response to the IG report.