Senate spending panel axes provision moving FBI headquarters to Maryland

The Senate Appropriations Committee removed language from one of its annual government funding bills Thursday that would have prevented the Trump administration from relocating the FBI’s headquarters anywhere other than a previously selected location in a Maryland suburb outside Washington, D.C.

The change of course came one week after the committee voted to adopt an amendment from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., that would have blocked the FBI from moving to the Ronald Reagan Building, which sits a few blocks away from the agency’s crumbling D.C. headquarters.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, had voted with the committee’s Democrats to approve the amendment citing security concerns, but flipped to oppose it after speaking with FBI Director Kash Patel.

“I came away with a satisfaction that my questions had been answered. I still have reservations about the move. I'll be frank with you,” Murkowski said. “But I don't believe that we should lock the FBI into the Greenbelt location, which that amendment would do.”

Murkwoski said the General Services Administration, which manages federal properties and had selected the suburban Maryland location, picked the Reagan Building after finishing an initial assessment. A third party, however, has not yet completed its security review. 

Murkowski cautioned the Trump administration against moving quickly to relocate the FBI headquarters, saying she’s “not convinced that we've got enough information to know that ultimately the Ronald Reagan Building is going to be the best location.”

Security analysis incomplete

Van Hollen said that he believes the committee should be “preserving decisions” that Congress has already made and raised concerns the Reagan Building hasn’t passed a security analysis.

“This has been a long, bipartisan process,” Van Hollen said. “And so when we got the request for reprogramming from the FBI, I had hoped that we would, on a bipartisan basis, say, ‘No, we're not going to accept your reprogramming request because it flies in the face of long-standing bipartisan support for this process.’”

Van Hollen reminded members of the committee that the first Trump administration halted efforts to pick a location outside of Washington, D.C., and instead proposed keeping the FBI headquarters at the same site.

The FBI inspector general later published a report concluding “the revised plan contained ambiguous facility security information and did not include certain other facility security information known by the FBI, which created an inadequate and unclear summary of the security posture of the proposed new facility.”

Van Hollen said Thursday he isn’t convinced the Reagan Building can meet the security requirements that Congress has said must go along with a new FBI headquarters.

Van Hollen also expressed frustration that he wasn't included in the meeting between some Republican senators and the FBI director, preventing him from asking about the decision to move from the prior GSA site in Maryland to the new GSA site within the Reagan Building.

Had Van Hollen’s amendment remained in the annual funding bill for the departments of Commerce and Justice it likely would have stopped the legislation from moving to the floor. Instead, the committee voted 20-9 to approve the measure.

Congress is supposed to complete work on the dozen appropriations bills by the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1, but is significantly behind schedule and will need a bipartisan stopgap spending bill to avoid a shutdown.

Fight over relocation

The federal government has been debating the best location for a new FBI headquarters for well over a decade while its current office space in the J. Edgar Hoover Building continues to deteriorate.

The GSA spent years deliberating between three potential locations in Maryland and Virginia before selecting Greenbelt, Maryland, in November 2023.

But the Trump administration announced earlier this month it wanted to use the Reagan Building instead, saying it would save the government money.

“FBI's existing headquarters at the Hoover building is a perfect example of a government building that has accumulated years of deferred maintenance, suffering from an aging water system to concrete falling off the structure,” GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian wrote in a statement.

The Reagan Building holds numerous other offices, including the Department of Commerce, Customs and Border Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Children’s Museum and several private businesses.

The announcement indicated the administration may relocate Customs and Border Protection.

“GSA will continue to support and work with CBP and their agency partners to fulfill their mission while the transition of the FBI to the Reagan Building commences,” the statement read. 

It didn’t, however, include a timeline or a price tag.