Senate Committee Votes To Block FBI office Relocation

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to ban the Federal Bureau of Investigation from a planned move to the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C.

The July 10 vote approved a Justice Department funding bill amendment that blocked the Trump administration from keeping the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., through a change in destination for the bureau.

The Republican majority committee voted 15-14 to adopt language that would halt a move from the J. Edgar Hoover Building site to any location that isn’t the previously approved site in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was chosen by the General Services Administration in 2023.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) crossed party lines to join Democrats in supporting halting the administration’s proposed move.

“My understanding is that this has been a decision that was made just very recently,” Murkowski said ahead of the vote. “So I, for one, would like to know that this analysis has actually been going on for more than just a couple [of] months, that there’s actually been that effort to ensure that we’re going to move forward.”

The amendment to block the move was introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who said the previous decision to move the FBI to Maryland was made as a result of a lengthy process that involved Congressional criteria and lengthy discourse.

According to the lawmaker, the Trump administration did not perform adequate research and analysis before choosing to repurpose the Ronald Reagan building for the FBI headquarters.

“A few weeks ago, the administration just announced that it wanted to snatch the $555 million that had been set aside for down payment on that selected site and use it instead to move the FBI into the Ronald Reagan Building,” Van Hollen said during the markup session.

“No analysis done with respect to security requirements, no analysis done with respect to FBI mission requirements, no review of the underlying statute as to the purpose of the Ronald Reagan Building, no analysis of what they would do with current tenants in that building.”

According to Van Hollen, allowing the change to happen sets a dangerous precedent that cedes power designated to the legislative branch and allows the executive branch to overstep.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) contradicted that argument, saying that Congress is “micromanaging the FBI.”

“We have to trust the experts as we put them in place,” Mullin said before the vote on the amendment, referencing those in authority at the agency.

“To make the assumption that the FBI would possibly put their men and women in a less secure building is laughable.”

The lawmaker rebutted the idea that Congress would know better than the FBI what the agency’s security decisions for a location should be.

“They know security, I promise you, better than all of us. This is what they fight, they fight threats … for us to try to micromanage their site planning is ridiculous,” Mullin said.

“We need to allow them to make a decision. We haven’t been able to make a decision, nor do we make a decision; we allow and support their decision that they make.

“I would assume we need to lean in and trust these individuals, because we’re not talking about Republicans or Democrats, we’re talking about the FBI.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the FBI for comment.