A top GSA official attended several meetings at the White House where plans for a new FBI headquarters were discussed in the lead-up to the federal government’s about-face decision to keep the agency in downtown D.C., according to documents obtained by the Washington Business Journal.
The General Services Administration confirmed the meetings were held from November 2017 to January 2018 in its July 31 written response to several pointed questions asked by senators in February during a Environment and Public Works committee hearing. The GSA declined to say whether the president’s views on the project were stated at any of those meetings, citing “established executive branch practices.”
The lack of detail has some, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., demanding more transparency from the federal government’s main civilian real estate arm.
“Given the delay in submission, the lack of detail in the responses is especially disappointing,” Van Hollen wrote in a letter to GSA Administrator Emily Murphy dated Tuesday. “Several of the questions I submitted for the record regarding the President’s involvement in the decision-making process for determining the site of the new headquarters building were not answered with any substance.”