Report shows Trump link to FBI HQ project

WASHINGTON — 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.