CONGRESS/DEMS/FBI/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Justice Department’s top watchdog will review why the F.B.I. scuttled plans to erect a new headquarters in suburban Washington and instead chose to replace the J. Edgar Hoover Building on its current site near the White House, he wrote to lawmakers this week. The F.B.I.’s abrupt change of plans has fueled concerns among Democrats in Congress that President Trump personally intervened to make sure that the land was not redeveloped with a project that would compete with his company’s nearby hotel. In May, Democrats asked the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, to examine the decision…The F.B.I. had been moving toward relocating to a campus in suburban Maryland or Virginia while also planning to move potentially thousands of bureau employees to Huntsville, Ala., where the F.B.I. already has a sizable presence and space for more people. But shortly after taking power, the Trump administration killed the plan to move to the suburbs.”
–Adam Goldman, “Justice Dept. Watchdog to Review Shift in Plan to Move F.B.I. Headquarters,” The New York Times online, July 3, 2019