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Former President Donald Trump didn’t personally intervene to stop the FBI from moving its headquarters from downtown Washington to the suburbs, a Justice Department’s watchdog said Tuesday, disputing a long-standing accusation by congressional Democrats.
After a four-year investigation, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded Mr. Trump did not change the FBI’s relocation plans to keep its downtown District of Columbia site out of the hands of developers who could have built a hotel competing with what was then the nearby Trump International Hotel.
The investigation also found that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray independently reached the decision to keep the headquarters in Washington rather than move to a sprawling suburban campus 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,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrote in a 76-page report.
“Specifically, we found no evidence that in making the decision to seek to have the new FBI headquarters remain at its current [downtown] site, Director Wray and others at the FBI considered the location of the then-named Trump International Hotel or how President Trump’s financial interests could be impacted by the decision,” Mr. Horowitz continued.
The Obama administration had proposed moving the FBI headquarters to the suburbs, selling the current site to a developer and using the funds to pay for the construction of a modern campus.
Mr. Trump scrapped those plans, touching off a political firestorm. He sought $3.3 billion to demolish the current building and construct a new headquarters in its place.
House Democrats at the time repeatedly accused Mr. Trump of directly involving himself in the decision to abandon an earlier plan that would have moved the FBI’s headquarters to the suburbs. Instead, they said, he pushed to keep it at its current Pennsylvania Avenue location.
They said it was a brazen conflict of interest by the president aimed at keeping competitors away from Trump International Hotel.
In 2018, a group of Democrats sent a letter to the General Services Administration alleging Mr. Trump scrapped the relocation plan to “prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land.”
“He should not have played any role in a determination that bears directly on his own financial interests with the Trump hotel,” wrote the Democrats, led by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who died in 2019.
The inspector general said Mr. Wray’s preference to keep the FBI in downtown Washington and build a new facility on the same site was based on several factors: its proximity to the Justice Department and White House, its ability to keep it secure and the expansion of the FBI’s Huntsville, Alabama, site that reduced the need for a massive complex in Maryland or Virginia.
“We found that Wray testified credibly about how he reached the decision independently and not as the result of any external pressure or influence,” the report said, adding “other FBI witnesses’ testimony” confirmed Mr. Wray’s account.
The report cited several meetings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Wray in which the president didn’t express a strong opinion about the decision to keep the FBI downtown.
Several witnesses recounted a December 2018 meeting between the two in which Mr. Trump “went out of his way” to ask the FBI director his view about relocating to the suburbs.
“You decide what is best for the organization and I will maintain the status quo until you decide,” Mr. Trump reportedly told Mr. Wray, according to the report.
President Biden last year reversed the Trump administration’s decision to keep the FBI at its current headquarters, requesting funding from Congress to move the bureau to suburban Virginia or Maryland.
In the budget request, the Biden administration said the bureau’s current headquarters “can no longer support the long-term mission of the FBI.”
“The FBI has begun a multiyear process of constructing a modern, secure suburban facility from which the FBI can continue its mission to protect the American people,” the budget request stated.
The General Services Administration and the FBI are working to identify a location to construct a federally owned, secure facility in the suburbs to support at least 7,500 personnel.
Three sites are under review for the new headquarters: Greenbelt and Landover in Maryland and Springfield, Virginia.
In its proposed budget, the Biden administration said the GSA and FBI will finalize an updated list of requirements for the suburban campus as part of their budget requests for fiscal 2024.
Some House Republicans this summer threatened to block funding for the project in response to what they say are politically motivated prosecutions of Mr. Trump by the Justice Department.
In June, some Republicans proposed a plan to eliminate funding for the new headquarters as pushback to the bureau’s role in criminal charges filed against Mr. Trump in separate cases. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to illegally retaining classified national-security information and pleaded not guilty to charges arising from his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, was on board with blocking funding, but it never gained any traction. Since Mr. McCarthy’s ousting as speaker this month, Congress has been paralyzed and unable to consider such moves.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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