Two Trump pals are bidding on building Comey's dream

Two Trump pals are bidding on building Comey's dream—a new $2 billion HQ for the FBI

Jen Hayden

Daily Kos Staff

Friday December 02, 2016 · 11:50 AM PST

2016/12/02 · 11:50

FBI Director James Comey (C) looks on as Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (L) and Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, shake hands after a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs hearing on "Fifteen Years After 9/11: Threats to the Homeland," on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on September 27, 2016. / AFP / YURI GRIPAS (Photo credit should read YURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images) — Mission accomplished, Comey

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So damn shady:

Two billionaire New York City developers bidding to build a new headquarters for the FBI — maybe the largest government development since the CIA moved to Langley in Northern Virginia in 1961 — have deep ties with President-elect Donald Trump, whose victory injects new intrigue into the jockeying for the more than $2 billion project.

One, Steven Roth, served as an economic adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign and co-owns a building with him in Manhattan. Another, Larry Silverstein, has been referred to by Trump as a “friend of mine.”

Oh, it gets worse:

And then there’s this wrinkle: The man who has lobbied hardest for a new campus, FBI Director James B. Comey, had his own role in the presidential campaign in publicly extending the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state less than two weeks before Election Day.

FBI officials are nearing the finish line on a decade-long push for a secure campus in the Washington suburbs. The contract attracted some of the most prominent developers on the East Coast. And the winning development team not only would receive more than $1 billion in federal appropriations to foot the cost of a new campus but also would win control of the current FBI headquarters property, considered a once-in-a-generation development opportunity in downtown Washington.

None of this is normal.

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