President Trump stated he’ll cease the FBI’s plan to maneuver out of its huge downtown Washington headquarters and relocate to suburban Maryland, pledging to maintain the legislation enforcement company within the nation’s capital.
“We’re going to cease. We’re not going to let it occur,” Mr. Trump stated in remarks Friday on the Department of Justice.
The president condemned the plan to construct a brand new FBI headquarters on a 61-acre plot close to the Metro station in Greenbelt. He complained that the Greenbelt location was too removed from the Justice Department’s headquarters and the bureau wants to stay downtown to assist cut back crime.
“We’re going to construct one other massive FBI constructing proper right here, which might have been the correct factor to do as a result of the FBI and DOJ should be close to one another,” Mr. Trump stated.
“We prefer to have legislation enforcement strolling the streets of the capital as a result of when the unhealthy guys are on the market and so they see there’s an FBI agent — that’s the last word in legislation enforcement — they’re not going to be appearing so unhealthy,” he continued.
Mr. Trump stated FBI Director Kash Patel is eyeing a former Commerce Division constructing in Washington that’s roughly 1 / 4 of the dimensions of the present headquarters, saying it might maintain “far fewer folks.” Since taking workplace final month, Mr. Trump has been decided to scale back the dimensions of presidency by means of layoffs, canceling spending plans and shuttering departments.
He stated Mr. Patel needs to promote the parcel the place the FBI headquarters sits as a result of the bureau doesn’t want the house it presently occupies.
The president didn’t say if he would favor constructing a brand new FBI headquarters on the identical parcel throughout the road from the Justice Department, which he championed throughout his first time period, or would again Mr. Patel’s thought to maneuver the company to the previous Commerce Division constructing.
The FBI is headquartered within the huge J. Edgar Hoover Constructing on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, which it has referred to as residence since 1975. It sits throughout the road from the Justice Department, which oversees the bureau’s operations.
Critics, together with former FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, have lengthy complained that the Hoover Constructing is outdated and too small to accommodate the bureau’s 11,000 staff.
The FBI beneath Mr. Trump, nevertheless, is shifting a whole lot of brokers out of the Washington headquarters and into discipline workplaces throughout the nation in addition to to its workplace in Huntsville, Alabama.
Underneath the plan to maneuver the FBI introduced in November 2023, the FBI would function the important thing tenant in a proposed Greenbelt improvement that would come with residences, lodge and retail house. The brand new headquarters could be a suburban campus and development could be funded by Congress, which might take months and even years to approve. A developer for the undertaking has not been chosen.
The Biden administration touted the proposal as a part of its effort to spend money on minority communities.
A number of Home Republicans had threatened to place the undertaking in limbo, pledging to defund it over what they name the bureau’s partisanship, most particularly its investigations into Mr. Trump.
The FBI has ping-ponged for greater than a decade between tearing down the Hoover constructing and establishing a contemporary facility on the identical website or constructing a campus-style headquarters within the suburbs.
Potential website choice plans have been shifting ahead beneath an settlement for the FBI to swap the Hoover Constructing’s beneficial downtown Washington parcel with a developer that might fund the suburban headquarters as a part of the alternate.
Nonetheless, the FBI nixed the swap in July 2017 beneath the primary Trump administration, citing value issues, and pushed to demolish the Hoover Constructing and construct a brand new facility on the identical website.
The reversal sparked accusations from Home Democrats that Mr. Trump nixed the undertaking to cease a developer from constructing a lodge close to his Trump Worldwide Resort, only a quick stroll from the FBI.
In 2018, a bunch of Democrats despatched a letter to the Common Companies Administration charging that Mr. Trump scrapped the relocation plan to “stop Trump Resort opponents from buying the land.”
“He mustn’t have performed any position in a dedication that bears instantly on his personal monetary pursuits with the Trump lodge,” wrote the Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who died in 2019.
As soon as Mr. Trump left workplace, lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia lobbied to incorporate funding within the 2022 federal price range for a suburban headquarters.
The Justice Division’s Workplace of Inspector Common in 2023 cleared Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing, saying his pursuits had nothing to do with the FBI’s new relocation plans, which have been made independently by Mr. Wray.
“Particularly, we discovered no proof that in making the choice to hunt to have the brand new FBI headquarters stay at its present [downtown] website, Director Wray and others on the FBI thought-about the placement of the then-named Trump Worldwide Resort or how President Trump’s monetary pursuits may very well be impacted by the choice,” the inspector normal report stated.
The inspector normal stated Mr. Wray’s choice to maintain the FBI in downtown Washington and construct a brand new facility on the identical website was based mostly on a number of elements: its proximity to the Justice Department and White Home; its means to maintain it safe; and the growth of the FBI’s Huntsville website, lowering the necessity for a large complicated in Maryland or Virginia.
“We discovered that Wray testified credibly about how he reached the choice independently and never as the results of any exterior strain or affect,” the report stated, including “different FBI witnesses’ testimony” confirmed Mr. Wray’s account.
