Maryland has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the General Services Administration after the Trump administration changed plans surrounding a headquarters building in Greenbelt.
“Throughout the selection process for the FBI headquarters, Maryland and Prince George’s County leaders joined in a coordinated bipartisan effort to ensure the federal government used a fair, transparent, and lawful process to select a site for the new headquarters, and to provide relevant stakeholders with information to make a reasoned selection that supported the FBI’s security and mission needs,” the lawsuit says. “State and county leaders joined in this effort based on their expectation that securing the FBI headquarters in Prince George’s County would bring transformative benefits to the County and the State.”
The GSA “duly completed the site selection process in 2023 and selected the Greenbelt site. Congress set aside additional funds for the project after that decision,” the filing explains. The FBI and GSA announced in July that the site would instead be the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and took actions to redirect the funds.
“These actions flouted Congress’s explicit direction to choose a site from the three specified sites, as well as other specific statutory directives concerning the selection of the site and the use of the funds,” it claims.
Democrat Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks, released a joint statement condemning the site shift. “A thorough and transparent selection process concluded that Greenbelt, Maryland, is the site best for a new FBI headquarters that meets the Bureau’s security and mission needs,” they said. “The Trump Administration has no grounds to ignore this selection, or redirect even one penny that Congress specifically appropriated for construction of the competitively selected site.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced the headquarters update on July 1, calling the decision a “historic moment.”
Then-GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian said the Hoover building “accumulated years of deferred maintenance, suffering from an aging water system to concrete falling off the structure,” noting he was proud to “find a building that best supports [the FBI] mission and their people.”
