On Tuesday, the American district judge Beryl Howell effectively authorized the transfer of the head office of the American Institute of Peace to the General Services Administration.
In fact, the building – and all the properties inside, had already been transferred on Saturday, according to Howell’s decision. “The agreement is no longer simply” proposed “but made,” wrote Howll, “making the complainants” requested by the use of this property. »»
The building, with an estimated value of $ 500 million, has become the last focal point in a dead end of several weeks between the former board of directors of the Institute and the staff and the members of the Elon Musk government. On March 14, the Trump administration dismissed the 10 members of the USIP voting board. When USIP employees prohibited DOGE employees from entering their head office at Washington DC, the DOGE team returned a few days later with a physical key that they had obtained from a former security entrepreneur.
The takeover was both physical and institutional. The former head of the State Department, Kenneth Jackson, was installed as president of the USIP, then replaced on March 25 by the staff of Doge Nate Cavanaugh, who had already been assigned to the General Services Administration. Last Friday evening, most USIP staff had received dismissal opinions, actually closing the agency.
The fight against the building was revealed on Monday, through court documents in a trial brought by former USIP staff against Cavanaugh, Doge, Donald Trump and other members of the administration. They reveal not only that Cavanaugh recently moved to transfer the building to the GSA, but that he planned to do so at no cost for the government.
In a letter included in the Court file, Cavanaugh told the acting administrator of the GSA, Stephen Ehikian, that the transfer “is in the best interest of the USIP, the federal government and the United States”. In a separate letter, dated March 29, the director of the Russell Vought management and budget office approved Ehikian’s request to “set the amount of reimbursement without expenses” for the installation.
A previously not declared judicial file on Monday talks about the justification of the Trump administration for trying to acquire the building.
“The transfer of American institutes [sic] of the installation of the peace seat (USIP) … is a priority of the Trump-Vance administration, “wrote Michael Peters of the GSA, who spent almost a decade leading a dental cabinet management company before it is appointed Commissioner of the Public Building Service In January, in a transfer request form. “The transfer will allow the GSA to meet other requirements of government space for the installation of the head office of the USIP in a profitable manner. However, the GSA had no sufficient time for the budget for the cost of acquiring the facility of the user of the USIP to a fair market value, and such an acquisition would not be an immediate priority for the GSA, taking into account the limited resources available in the Federal Construction Fund. ” ».
In other words, the GSA needs the office space, but cannot afford to acquire it at a fair market value. (Earlier this year, the GSA has targeted hundreds of government buildings for sale, including the FBI headquarters and a complex housing of a CIA installation.)
