President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to demolish four federal buildings after tearing down the White House's East Wing, and officials say he's leaving a key government agency out of his scheme.
Mydelle “Mina” Wright, a former senior official at the General Services Administration, submitted a sworn court declaration this week complaining the White House was not consulting with the GSA, which oversees government property, to solicit bids to demolish the four historic buildings in Washington, D.C., reported CNN.
"The buildings in question — many of which feature architectural styles that don’t fit Trump’s stated preferences — include the Robert C. Weaver Building, which serves as headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the New Deal-era Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building; the GSA Regional Office Building; and the Liberty Loan Building, although the GSA announced plans to dispose of that building last year, which could include transferring control to a new owner," CNN reported.
The administration argued in a court filing the government was only considering transfer of ownership, not tearing them down, and called Wright’s assertions “impermissible and factually inaccurate.”
“It is based on hearsay, not personal knowledge, and it is wrong,” wrote principal deputy assistant attorney general Adam Gustafson and deputy chief Marissa Piropato in the filling. "[GSA] is currently evaluating those assets not for demolition but for disposal — meaning conveyance out of federal ownership."
Trump has made major changes to the White House Rose Garden and added gilded features to the Oval Office, Cabinet Room and West Colonnade, and he's planning to build a massive $300 million ballroom on the former site of East Wing, but Wright said in her declaration that his hands-on involvement circumvented strict legal guidelines and historic preservation rules.
“For the first time of which I am aware, a President is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the agency’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him ‘No?’” Wright said.
The Weaver building is an example of 1960s-era brutalist architecture, which Trump made clear he dislikes in an executive order he signed earlier this year mandating that all federal buildings “embrace classical architecture,” while the Cohen building features New Deal murals and sculpture and is an example of Egyptian Revival and Stripped Classicism architecture, according to the GSA.
"Historian Michael Austin has warned that Liberty Loan, an example of 'tempo' federal buildings that popped up in the 20th century, is an 'irreplaceable piece of Washington history,'" CNN reported. "The GSA Regional Office Building is another New Deal-era building."
Historic preservationists are also suing Trump over his plans to paint the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is next door to the White House, from gray to bright white.