Trump Vows To Cancel FBI Move To Greenbelt, Keep Headquarters In D.C.

The plan to move the FBI’s headquarters from downtown D.C. to Greenbelt, Maryland, appears to be dead. 

“We’re going to stop it — not going to let that happen,” President Donald Trump said at a press conference Friday at the Department of Justice.

“We’re going to build another big FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place because the FBI and the DOJ have to be near each other,” he said. “We’re going to get a great building built. It’s going to be a magnificent building.”

However, Trump later opened the door to another route. He said that FBI Director Kash Patel told him the agency doesn’t “need that kind of room,” and would opt to take a Department of Commerce building that is a quarter of the size of its Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters. The administration could then sell its J. Edgar Hoover building. 

The Hoover building was one of the 443 “non-core” properties the General Services Administration said it was considering for disposal earlier this month before it took the list down less than 24 hours later.

Trump said that having the headquarters in D.C. would be a benefit to the capital “if for no other reason” than public safety in the nation's capital.

“We like having law enforcement walking the streets of our capital because when the bad guys are out there and they see there's an FBI agent — that’s the ultimate in law enforcement — they're not going to be acting so bad,” he said.

Trump referred to Maryland as a “liberal state” but said that had “no bearing” on the decision. He also said the planned headquarters site is “three hours away.”The Greenbelt site is about 16 miles away from the Hoover Building — roughly a 30-minute drive, according to Google Maps. 

A GSA spokesperson said in a statement to Bisnow Friday evening that the “GSA is ready to work with our customer agencies, including the FBI, to provide them with workspaces that meet their mission requirements.”

The FBI declined to comment.

Maryland politicians quickly spoke out against Trump's reversal Friday evening. 

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, the former Prince George's County executive, said on X that Trump “needs to stop playing games with our national security.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen also posted on social media, saying he would “oppose even one penny being spent on a headquarters elsewhere.”

Gov. Wes Moore also criticized the decision on X, calling it a “reckless move” and arguing that turning the headquarters selection into a “partisan issue makes our country less safe and harms the FBI's mission.”

Those three officials joined the rest of Maryland's Democratic congressional delegation in releasing a statement arguing for the Greenbelt site as the best option for the agency and American taxpayers.

“What’s more, it ensures that the FBI can move to a facility that will finally meet its mission and security needs as soon as possible,” it said. “We will continue working to bring the headquarters to Maryland, following the final decision that was made to do so in 2023.”

The plan to move the thousands of FBI employees from its crumbling home on Pennsylvania Avenue has been more than a decade in the making.

After the Obama administration narrowed its search down to three suburban sites, Trump's administration scrapped the search in 2017.

The Biden administration revived the search in 2022, and in November 2023 it selected a 61-acre site next to the Greenbelt Metro station for the new headquarters.

The plan would move 7,500 FBI agents to a new 2.1M SF headquarters and is estimated to cost $3.5B. Congress has already allocated $845M to the project.

The Greenbelt selection was immediately contested by Virginia lawmakers and the FBI director. A federal inspector general launched an investigation into the process just weeks after the decision. Last month, the investigation concluded with the inspector general finding no conflict of interest.

The move was on precarious terrain as soon as Trump took office, with industry leaders speculating that his administration would likely terminate the deal.