Trump, Kari Lake Cancel Massive D.C. Lease as Voice of America Folds

Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee the agency that runs Voice of America (VoA), has wasted little time in effectively dismantling the agency and canceling a massive office lease in the heart of Washington, D.C., even though her authority to cancel the lease, which started last fall, remains unclear.

Lake, a former television news anchor and Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate, earlier this month assumed her role as special adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent government agency that operates VoA and Radio Free Europe, among others. Trump on Friday issued an executive order calling for the elimination of non-statutory functions of certain agencies, including USAGM, putting most of the agency’s thousands of employees on indefinite paid administrative leave. 

On Friday, meanwhile, Lake posted a video to social media vowing cancellation of the agency’s 350,000-square-foot lease of 1875 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, an EastBanc-owned building just a few blocks from the White House, the Business Journals reported. USAGM on Saturday issued an announcement that Lake had canceled the “obscenely expensive” lease that the agency inked last fall under the Biden administration, moving from its 698,000-square-foot home at 330 Independence Avenue SW.

The lease would have cost the government “nearly a quarter of a billion dollars” over its 15-year lifespan, according to Lake. The building also does not house broadcasting facilities to meet the agency’s needs, and the lease included a $9 million commission to a private real estate agency with “connections,” Lake alleged.

“The U.S. Agency for Global Media will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview and shed everything that is not statutorily required,” Lake said in a statement. “I fully support the president’s executive order. Waste, fraud and abuse have run rampant in this agency, and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund it.

“This agency is not salvageable,” the announcement added.

A representative for Eastbanc did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

USAGM is an independent agency funded by Congress, and it’s not clear if Trump has the legal authority to fully dismantle it. It’s also not clear if the administration has the ability to cancel a lease not under the General Service Administration’s purview. Federal leases operate under a “firm term” and “soft term” timeline, wherein a lease contract is usually binding under an initial set firm term, typically up to 20 years, before entering into the soft term, wherein the lease can be canceled with little notice. 

Federal leases generally can’t be terminated during the firm term unless such a clause is included in the lease agreement, according to law firm Hirschler. The penalties for cutting such a large lease this early into its lifespan weren’t immediately clear. 

Voice of America was established in 1942, and its charter was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976. The organization, and others such as Radio Free Europe and Office of Cuba Broadcasting, have been overseen by the USAGM (formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors) since 1994. VoA has been based at 330 Independence Avenue SW, known as the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, since 1954. 

The outgoing Biden administration at the beginning of this year directed the building be sold as part of the government’s decade-plus policy of cutting down its real estate portfolio. 

Although USAGM’s office space at the Cohen Building held a capacity of nearly 3,500 workers, the average 2023 daily occupancy was just 72 workers, or an approximate utilization of just 2 percent per every 200 usable square feet, according to a March 2024 report from the Public Building’s Reform Board. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.