SECRET SERVICE/TRUMP BUSINESS: “The Secret Service has been forced to relocate its Trump Tower command center to a trailer outside the Midtown skyscraper after a lease agreement between the General Services Administration and the Trump Organization fell apart last month, two people with knowledge of the negotiations said on Thursday [8-3-17].
The Secret Service has had a presence in Trump Tower since late 2015, when then-candidate Donald J. Trump became a front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. For much of that time, it ran its operations from space inside the building, just one floor below Mr. Trump’s triplex residence.
The G.S.A., which arranges real estate transactions on behalf of federal agencies, had been in negotiations with the Trump Organization to formalize a lease of that space when the deal collapsed. The two parties had gone as far as drawing up a lease contract, the two people privy to the negotiations said. But representatives of the Trump Organization refused to sign it over objections to the inclusion of a clause in the contract, the contents of which were not immediately known.
It also was not immediately clear why the Trump Organization objected to the clause.
Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, did not address that account. She merely said both parties had agreed the agency should look elsewhere. ‘After much consideration, it was mutually determined that it would be more cost effective and logistically practical for the Secret Service to lease space elsewhere,’ she wrote in an email.
Pamela A. Dixon, a spokeswoman for G.S.A., declined to comment.”
-Nicholas Fandos, “Secret Service Post Moves From Trump Tower to a Trailer,” The New York Times online, Aug. 3, 2017