President Donald Trump threw cold water on the plans to build a new FBI headquarters in Maryland during a speech at the Justice Department on Friday, adding new uncertainty into a contentious and yearslong issue for lawmakers.
The General Services Administration has picked Greenbelt, Md., as the home of the new FBI headquarters, after a lengthy and high-profile competition over where the new facility would be built, and Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars for the headquarters project.
Trump said in his speech, which focused more broadly on combating fentanyl trafficking and criticism of Justice Department actions against him during the Biden administration, that the FBI and the Justice Department “have to be near each other.”
The Maryland site can be reached within an hour from the Justice Department.
“They were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state, but that has no bearing on what I’m about to say. But we’re going to stop it,” Trump said.
“Not going to let that happen,” Trump said. “We’re going to build another big FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place.”
Responding to Trump’s comments Friday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said he would “fight that tooth and nail, and there will not be a penny appropriated for an FBI headquarters anywhere other than Greenbelt, Maryland.”
In a joint press release, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Democratic members of Congress from the state said they would continue working to bring the headquarters to Maryland. “The FBI needs a new headquarters that meets its mission,” the group said.
A GSA spokesperson said at the time of the site selection in 2023 that the agency found Greenbelt to be the best site because it had the greatest transportation access to FBI workers and visitors and it was the lowest cost to taxpayers, along with giving “the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule.”
The fiscal 2024 funding package funneled $200 million toward the project to build a new FBI headquarters, and Congress for fiscal 2023 appropriated $375 million for the project.
Some conservative House Republicans have criticized constructing a new headquarters amid hostility toward FBI leadership under the Biden administration.
Charged speech
Trump launched into a winding, politically charged speech during his visit to the DOJ headquarters, a move that is sure to revive concerns the new administration is hurting the department’s traditional independence from the White House.
He spoke in front of key Justice Department officials he appointed and called out Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., as in attendance. The speech finished with the song “YMCA” by Village People, a staple at his campaign rallies.
Trump referenced long-standing grievances with the Biden administration, including the criminal investigations into him, and touched on actions he has taken since returning to the White House in January.
Trump referenced his pardoning of nearly all those charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and said his administration removed senior FBI officials who “misdirected resources to send SWAT teams after” people charged in connection to Jan. 6. Trump also boasted about pushing out U.S. attorneys appointed by former President Joe Biden.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the department of injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back. They’re never coming back,” he said.
Trump critics have pointed to many of those actions to contend it is Trump who has politicized the Justice Department.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, slammed Trump’s speech and framed it as a violation of the boundary between independent criminal law enforcement and presidential power.
In a press conference outside of DOJ headquarters, Raskin described it as “an insult to the thousands of professional lawyers who go to work at the Department of Justice every day to enforce the rule of law.”
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