Donald Trump Partner's Connection to New FBI Headquarters Raises Questions
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump during a campaign event on December 19, 2023 in Waterloo, Iowa and, inset, the seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation seen outside its headquarters in Washington D.C. on August 15, 2022.
A resurfaced report that linked Donald Trump with a bid to build a new FBI headquarters has prompted criticism after the former president expressed his support for a replacement to the J. Edgar Hoover building to be constructed within Washington D.C.
“The FBI headquarters should not be moved to a far-away location, but should stay right where it is, in a new spectacular building, in the best location on our now crime-ridden and filthy-dirty, graffiti-scarred, capital,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “They should be involved in bringing back D.C., not running away from it.”
In 2017, The Associated Press reported, citing another rival bidder, that Vornado Realty Trust—which owned buildings with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family—was among three firms seeking the contract to build the replacement headquarters.
At the time, Gerald Connolly, a Democratic representative for Virginia, said the ties to Trump created a conflict of interest, a claim the Trump White House denied at the time.
It remains unclear whether Trump maintains any connection with Vornado, which was then reportedly a part-owner of two buildings, in New York and San Francisco, with the Trump Organization.
Newsweek approached the Trump campaign via email for comment on Monday.
Critics of the former president have placed fresh attention on the prior claims in light of his recent stance on the new headquarters, with some social media users claiming that Trump was “the King of Grift,” that they were “not even surprised,” and accusing him of being “the swamp that he claims he wants to get rid of.”
Trump has already faced a backlash from some Republicans over his call for the FBI to remain headquartered in Washington D.C.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—one of his Republican primary adversaries—claimed the former president was “seeking to deepen the swamp” with the move, rather than root out supposed corruption and wasteful spending in the capitol, as Trump had promised to do in his 2016 campaign.
“The Swamp” is a term Trump has used in the past to describe the capital.
In early November, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal buildings, announced that it had chosen a site for the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland, several miles from the capital’s limits, following a years-long selection and tendering process. The site was offered by Renard Development, which made the claim about Vornado to The AP.
None of the final three sites considered by the GSA were within the district; including the Greenbelt site, the two other potential locations were Landover Mall, also in Maryland and to the east of D.C., and Springfield, Virginia, to the west of Alexandria, which is situated just outside the southern city limits of the capital.
At the time, GSA administrator Robin Carnahan said the $3.5-billion building in Greenbelt would be “state-of-the-art” and would “advance [the FBI’s] critical mission for years to come.”
Discussions over a new site to replace the J. Edgar Hoover building on Pennsylvania Avenue began after the brutalist building—completed in 1977 and named after the agency’s longest-serving director—was deemed unfit for continued use and too expensive to repair.
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