The FBI announces its transfer to a new headquarters in Washington, DC
The current FBI headquarters had structural and utility problems, and its move was discussed for several years.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) selected a new building for its headquarters in Washington, DC, after nearly two decades of failed attempts to find a new permanent space.
The Bureau and the General Services Administration (GSA) selected the Ronald Reagan Building, a few blocks from the Hoover Building, as the new location. It housed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until this year, when the Trump administration integrated it into the State Department and authorized Customs and Border Protection to assume the building’s lease.
Until this announcement, the FBI had been headquartered in downtown D.C. in the J. Edgar Hoover Building since 1975, but structural problems have plagued the building for the past 20 years, leading to redevelopment and relocation projects that as of Thursday had not been successfully resolved.
“This is a historic moment for the FBI,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement, adding that he is “taking FBI Headquarters into a new era and providing our law enforcement officers with a safer place to work.”
“Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost-effective and resource-efficient way for us to carry out our mission of protecting the American people and defending the Constitution,” Patel continued.
It is unclear when the FBI will begin its transition out of the Hoover Building, however, according to officials, the relocation will save at least $300 million in needed maintenance at the building currently occupied by the FBI.
In a March speech at the Justice Department, President Trump said that his administration is “going to build another great FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place, because the FBI and the Justice Department have to be near each other.”
“They were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away, in Maryland, a liberal state,” Trump said,and added that the state’s political leadership had “no influence” on his decision to cancel an earlier Biden administration plan to move the headquarters to Maryland.
During his first term, Trump abandoned a plan to move the FBI to one of three locations in Maryland or Virginia and instead proposed a smaller headquarters in Washington to replace the Hoover Building.
In 2023, under the Biden administration, the General Services Administration chose Greenbelt, Maryland, as the new FBI headquarters. The decision came after 15 years of debate over whether the headquarters should move to Maryland or Virginia.

