FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview clip shared Friday that the bureau will move some employees outside of the Washington, D.C., area and leave its downtown headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover building, calling it “unsafe for our workforce.”
In the next three to nine months, 1,500 FBI employees will be moved outside of the National Capital Region, Patel told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, saying that about 11,000 employees, or a third of the bureau’s total workforce, are currently assigned in and around D.C.
“A third of the crime doesn’t happen here, so we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out,” he said. “Every state is getting a plus up.”
Finding a new headquarters for the FBI has been a decade-long pursuit. The General Services Administration in 2023 picked a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, as the new home for the law enforcement agency over one in Virginia, which prompted protests from the losing state’s lawmakers as well as FBI leadership who criticized the selection process.
Those plans were put on hold, however, when Donald Trump became president again. In a March speech at the Justice Department, he said “we’re going to stop” the Greenbelt move.
“We’re going to build another big FBI building right where it is,” the president said.
As far back as 2013, a report found that it’s “well documented…the FBI Headquarters building has fallen into disrepair.”
“We want the American men and women to know if you’re going to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we’re gonna give you a building that’s commensurate with that,” Patel said. “That’s not this place.”
The FBI said it had no comment regarding where the headquarters would move to or when that would happen.
Prior to becoming the agency’s director, Patel expressed an interest in moving the headquarters outside of D.C. to reduce supposed political influence.
