Will keep FBI in DC, scrap plan to move to Maryland, says Donald Trump

Trump said he was going to stop the move, castigating Maryland - a heavily Democratic state - and saying relocating the FBI would leave it too far away from the DOJ

By Stephanie Lai and Hadriana Lowenkron

 

President Donald Trump said he would seek to scrap a plan to move the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters from Washington, DC to Maryland, and instead keep it in the nation’s capital — the latest in a long-running saga over the site for the agency’s main office. 

Trump, speaking Friday at the Department of Justice, said he was going to stop the move, castigating Maryland — a heavily Democratic state — and saying relocating the FBI would leave it too far away from the DOJ, hampering efforts for the agencies to work together. 

 

 

“We’re going to stop it, not going to let that happen,” he said. “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.”

 

The General Services Administration announced in 2023 that the headquarters would go to Greenbelt, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, capping a years-long race between Maryland and Virginia to land the project.

 

Trump’s remarks, laced with criticisms of both the DOJ and the FBI over their investigations into his handling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, underscored his push to overhaul the agencies in his second term.

 

Trump said FBI Director Kash Patel had told him he hoped to move the FBI to an “old Department of Commerce building that’s about 25 per cent of the size,” without elaborating. The comments, though, suggest the Trump administration is considering slashing the number of FBI personnel. 

 

The president said he liked the idea of keeping the FBI in Washington so that agents would be seen on the street providing a deterrent to crime, though the law enforcement agency’s personnel don’t typically patrol the streets of the capital. 

 

He also claimed to be clamping down on crime and disorder in Washington, even as a short-term funding bill from Republicans to avert a government shutdown would force a cut to the city, threatening services, including the police. 

 

“We’re cleaning up our city, we’re cleaning up our great capital,” Trump said, adding that he doesn’t want to be embarrassed when foreign leaders visit. 

 

“I didn’t want to have them see tents. I didn’t want to have them see graffiti. I didn’t want to have them see broken barriers and potholes in the roads, and we had it looking beautiful,” he added. “And we’re going to do that for the city.”