Patel says FBI headquarters to 'permanently close' with move

Bill Faries, Bloomberg News on Dec 26, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency’s historic-but-aging headquarters in Washington would be “shut down permanently” as he shifts personnel into the building once occupied by the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.

“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said in a post Friday on X, adding that it would save taxpayer funds and better serve the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s requirements.

Built in the brutalist architectural style and opened on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1975, the J. Edgar Hoover building has long had detractors who said it was decrepit and no longer suited for the FBI. Yet the battle over whether and where to relocate the headquarters dragged on for years.

Assuming the long-promised move to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center takes place, it will keep the agency’s top personnel near the Justice Department, White House and other federal institutions. But it’s a setback for Maryland, which in 2023 was promised the new headquarters after a lengthy search that resulted in Congress providing funding for construction in the suburb of Greenbelt, outside of Washington.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, and state officials last month filed suit to prevent the Greenbelt plan from being scrapped.

“We will not let the Trump administration strip away what Prince George’s County won and deny its communities the transformative benefits this project would bring,” State Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement.

The General Services Administration said the Maryland site was chosen because it had “the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule.”

Patel, however, has long echoed President Donald Trump’s demands to find a different option.

“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast last year after Trump’s reelection.