Donald Trump’s General Services Administration (GSA) is apparently mulling plans to sell buildings where some of America’s most-iconic, venerated agencies are located. From Andy Sullivan and Tim Reid at Reuters:
GSA, which manages federal properties, said it had identified 443 properties totaling more than 80 million square feet that ‘are not core to government operations’ and could be sold off. The potential sell-off appears to be part of Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal government, led by Elon Musk. The downsizing drive has already led to 100,000 workers taking buyouts or being fired.
The list of potential properties is long—homes to Veterans Affairs, FBI, Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Labor, among others—and details, such as asking prices and timelines, are short.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
This mob-hit on government-agency buildings (fomented by “cost-savings” “genius” Elon) should be seen as Donald picking up where he left off from Regime No. 1, when he and then-GSA administrator Emily Murphy engaged in some supremely shady dealings around government properties.
Back then, Donald was using his rehabbed post-office hotel as “Emolument Violations Ground Zero” and, apparently, couldn’t stomach the concept of remaking the FBI building into a fancy hotel. (Note: SCOTUS dismissed all Emoluments cases after Donny lost to President Biden in which they asserted, in effect, that illegally profiting off his position no longer mattered.) From American Oversight:
For more than a decade, the FBI sought congressional funding to move its headquarters from the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C., to the suburbs — a cost-saving plan that would address serious security concerns and free up prime downtown real estate. So when the Trump administration canceled the project in July 2017 and then seven months later announced plans to rebuild at the downtown site, which sits a block away from the Trump International Hotel, eyebrows rose. In late summer 2018, after reports surfaced that Trump was personally involved in that decision, the GSA inspector general found that GSA’s Emily Murphy may have misled Congress earlier in the year about the extent of Trump’s involvement—and that the agency had not accurately estimated the costs of rebuilding.
Look I get it. Perjury while giving sworn testimony is absolutely fine if you’re white and furthering Republican(s’) corruption. And as TrumpFile readers well know, once you’re “deputized” in Donald’s inner circle, you WILL get new gigs later: GSA’s Emily Murphy (to my mind, criminally; in furtherance of other, ongoing-coup ops) performatively delayed “ascertainment” of Biden’s presidency in order to please her short-timer boss.
