D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and President Donald Trump are on the same page, at least when it comes to where the next FBI headquarters should be located.
Just days after Trump said he would work to prevent the headquarters from moving to nearby Maryland, Bowser said that she has long been in favor of that position.
“We have been supportive of the FBI relocation off of Pennsylvania Avenue, and that’s where we’ve been for a while,” Bowser said. “We do think that it will create a nexus with the rest of our vision for the Downtown.”
For years, federal officials have considered moving the FBI out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, which is in Northwest D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue at 10th Street. In 2023, under the Biden administration, the General Services Administration announced Greenbelt, Maryland, would be the site for the new headquarters.
Trump has never supported moving the FBI to the Maryland suburbs, and on Friday, he made it clear that he would work to block it.
“They were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away in Maryland,” Trump said. “But we’re going to stop it. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Greenbelt is not three hours away from Downtown D.C., but rather a nearly 25-minute drive from the current FBI headquarters.
Still, Trump insisted that “the FBI and the DOJ need to be near each other.”
If his plan comes to fruition, it is not yet clear exactly where the headquarters would ultimately be located.
Bowser said she supports putting it near “an underutilized Metro station.”
She was also careful to note that with all the recent changes in the federal government, it was not clear how many employees would be working at a new headquarters.
“We are not talking about the same cadre of FBI personnel that we would have been last year,” Bowser said. “I understand that a lot of the personnel are being sent around the country.”
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and the Democratic lawmakers who represent the state in the U.S. House and Senate released a joint statement, vowing to continue fighting for the headquarters to be built in Greenbelt.
“The GSA selected Greenbelt for the new, consolidated FBI headquarters because it is the best site, offering the lowest price and the best value to taxpayers,” they said. “We will continue working to bring the headquarters to Maryland.”
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