The FBI will be on the move soon, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Patel said that the FBI will be leaving the J. Edgar Hoover Building and that FBI agents will be increasingly located outside of Washington, D.C.
“Look, the FBI is 38,000 when we’re fully manned, which we’re not,” Patel said in a video posted to Fox Business. The comment came during Maria Bartiromo’s interview with Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino that will air Sunday. A snippet was released by Fox Business on Friday.
“In the national capital region in the 50-mile radius around Washington, D.C., there were 11,000 FBI employees. That’s like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn’t happen here. So, we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out,” he said.
“Every state’s getting a plus-up,” he said.
“And I think when we do things like that, we inspire folks in America to become intel analysts and agents and say, ‘We want to go work at the FBI, because we want to go fight violent crime and we want to get sent down into the country to do it.’ And that’s what we’re doing in the next three, six, nine months. We’re going to do that hard,” he said.
🚨BREAKING: FBI Director Kash Patel announces the FBI will be moving out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington DC.
“There’s 11,000 FBI agents in DC… Removing 1500.. Every states getting a plus up. The FBI is leaving the Hoover Building.. Unsafe for our workforce.” pic.twitter.com/s2Da4c1S15
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 16, 2025
“And, I did not know I was going to do this, but I’m going to announce it on your show anyway,” Patel added.
Are you glad Kash Patel is in charge of the FBI?
“This FBI is leaving the Hoover Building because this building is unsafe for our workforce,” he said.
“You just gave up a big nugget there,” Bongino interjected.
“We want the American men and women to know, if you’re gonna to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we’re going to give you a building that’s commensurate with that, and that’s not this place,” Patel said.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia was hardly enthusiastic.
“What the FBI needs right now is stability and support. What it doesn’t need is some half-baked effort that will create additional barriers for agents and disrupt collaboration with the rest of our Intelligence Community,” he said in a statement, according to WRC-TV.
Kash Patel: the FBI is leaving the J Edgar Hoover building. Trump plans to cut $500 million from the FBI budget.
This is what I voted for. pic.twitter.com/kxHFO2aNAc
— Praying Medic (@prayingmedic) May 16, 2025
Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland said he is not opposed to moving FBI agents into local areas.
“If the FBI agents are going to work with the state and local law enforcement, you could have a multiplier effect that helps to reduce crime and other things like that,” he said.
He said that abandoning the Hoover Building is fine with him, if it means a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, selected in 2023 by the Biden administration, can be reconsidered. President Donald Trump said after taking office that the move would not happen.
“Let’s fast-track the move to get that built out. It’s in the best interest of the FBI and the nation,” Ivey said.
In March, Trump said his administration was “going to build another big FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place, because the FBI and the DOJ have to be near each other,” according to the New York Post.
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