Trump eyes basing his new Board of Peace at a Washington building in legal limbo

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is looking at basing the new Board of Peace, which is tied to both the Gaza ceasefire and larger international ambitions, in the Washington building that formerly housed the U.S. Institute of Peace, according to four administration officials.

The officials, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the topic has been a matter of serious discussion, but they stressed that a final decision has not yet been made about where the board’s administrative staff will be located.

The building is the subject of litigation brought by former employees and executives of the nonprofit think tank after the Republican administration seized the facility last year and fired almost all the institute’s staff. The building has since been renamed the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace, but its name and status remain in legal limbo.

A federal judge had ruled that the U.S. Institute of Peace, as an independent nongovernmental organization established by Congress, is not subject to executive branch control and that the takeover was illegal. Enforcement of that decision was put on hold after the government appealed.

“A stay is not permission for the loser of a case to hijack the property of the winning party,” said George Foote, counsel for former USIP leadership and staff. “The government does not have a license to rename the USIP headquarters building or lease it out for ten years.”

“It certainly has no right to open the building to a new international organization like the proposed Board of Peace,” Foote said in a statement.

Rumors that Trump planned to use the building for the Board of Peace began to circulate after the administration used the board’s logo over an image of the USIP building and its distinctive domed roof.

That was shown when Trump unveiled the Board of Peace last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The board currently has 27 “founding members” made up of world leaders whose initial task is to oversee Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan.

But Trump appears to have greater ambitions for the board, and its charter says it will look to take on and resolve other global conflicts. Many of America’s top allies in Europe and elsewhere have declined to join what they suspect may be an attempt to rival the U.N. Security Council.