FBI to relocate headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland

The FBI will move out of its massive downtown Washington headquarters and relocate to suburban Maryland, the state’s officials confirmed Wednesday.

In a statement, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, its two U.S. senators and all of its U.S. House members called the decision “a historic moment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and our nation.”

The lawmakers said the FBI will move to a 61-acre plot near the Metro station in Greenbelt, Maryland. It will serve as a key tenant in a proposed project that would also include apartments, a hotel and retail space.

A developer for the project has not yet been selected.

“We agree with the GSA’s determination that based on merit the Greenbelt site is best suited to serve the present and future FBI and the dedicated public servants who work tirelessly to protect Americans and uphold the law,” the lawmaker said.

“Considering cost to the taxpayer, equity, construction timeline, transportation access, and the FBI’s mission requirements, we have long believed that Greenbelt is the best site for this crucial facility. We are pleased that the GSA arrived at the same conclusion,” the statement continued.

But lawmakers in Virginia, which was also in the running for the project, were angry, saying the GSA acted without notifying them.

“Lacking even the basic courtesy of a heads up, GSA has reportedly decided on a Maryland site for the new FBI headquarters. In making this decision, GSA has shamelessly caved to political pressure, putting blatant politics over the merits and amending the weighting of long-established criteria to make this decision all but predictable,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Democrat.

In a joint statement, Virginia’s two Democratic senators said they were “deeply disappointed,” blasting the Biden administration for a “tainted” selection process.

“It’s especially disappointing that the FBI’s initial criteria for this decision — developed independently by the GSA and affirmed by Congress just last year — were changed at the 11th hour by the Administration following political pressure,” said Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

“We appropriately criticized the last administration for politicizing the new FBI headquarters — only for a new administration to come in and allow politics to taint the selection process,” they said.

An FBI spokeswoman referred a request for comment to the General Services Administration, which is overseeing the process. The GSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The new headquarters would be a suburban campus style and construction would be funded by Congress, which could take months or even years to approve. A developer for the project has not yet been selected. 

Several House Republicans have threatened to put the project in limbo, pledging to defund it over what they call the Bureau’s partisanship, most especially its investigations of former President Donald Trump.

Greenbelt was one of three suburban sites under consideration for the project. The GSA also looked at Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia.

A recent GSA report showed that the FBI had raised concerns about all three sites, including lack of infrastructure such as mass transit and a lack of space to expand.

The FBI is currently headquartered in the massive J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Northwest, which it has called home since 1975. It sits just across the street from the Justice Department, which oversees the bureau’s operations.

Critics, including FBI Director Christoper A. Wray, have long complained that the Hoover Building is outdated and too small to house the bureau’s 11,000 workers.

However, the FBI has pingponged between tearing down the Hoover building and constructing a modern facility on the same site, or building a campus-style headquarters in the suburbs.

Potential site selection plans were moving forward under an agreement for the FBI to swap the Hoover Building’s valuable downtown Washington parcel with a developer that would fund the suburban headquarters as part of the exchange.

However, the FBI nixed the swamp in July 2017, citing cost concerns, and pushed to demolish the Hoover Building and rebuild a facility on the same site.

The reversal sparked accusations from House Democrats, who accused then-President Trump of nixing the project to stop a developer from building a hotel near his Trump International Hotel, just a short walk from the FBI’s downtown headquarters.

In 2018, a group of Democrats sent a letter to the General Services Administration alleging Mr. Trump scrapped the relocation plan to “prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land.”

“He should not have played any role in a determination that bears directly on his own financial interests with the Trump hotel,” wrote the Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who died in 2019.

Once Mr. Trump left office, lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia lobbied to include funding in the 2022 federal budget for a suburban headquarters.

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General last month cleared Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing, saying his interests had nothing to do with the FBI’s new relocation plans, which were made by Mr. Wray independently.

“Specifically, we found no evidence that in making the decision to seek to have the new FBI headquarters remain at its current [downtown] site, Director Wray and others at the FBI considered the location of the then-named Trump International Hotel or how President Trump’s financial interests could be impacted by the decision,” the inspector general report said.

The inspector general said Mr. Wray’s preference to keep the FBI in downtown Washington and build a new facility on the same site was based on several factors: its proximity to the Justice Department and White House; its ability to keep it secure; and the expansion of the FBI’s Huntsville, Alabama, site reducing the need for a massive complex in Maryland or Virginia.

“We found that Wray testified credibly about how he reached the decision independently and not as the result of any external pressure or influence,” the report said, adding “other FBI witnesses’ testimony” confirmed Mr. Wray’s account.

Lawmakers on both sides of the Potomac have touted their locations’ advantages.

In Virginia, officials pitched Springfield’s proximity to the Pentagon and other national security agencies. It also moves the bureau’s headquarters closer to its training facility in Quantico, Virginia.

Maryland officials, meanwhile, highlighted the lower cost of building in their state and would underscore the Biden administration’s commitment to investing in minority communities.