FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the agency’s longtime headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, will close permanently.
The agency said earlier this year that it would abandon the building in favor of the former U.S. Agency for International Development headquarters.
“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. Working directly with President Trump and Congress, we accomplished what no one else could,” Patel wrote on X.
Patel explained that taxpayers would’ve paid about $5 billion for a new headquarters that wouldn’t open until 2035, with the move to the USAID’s Reagan building saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately.
“This decision puts resources where they belong: defending the homeland, crushing violent crime, and protecting national security. It delivers better tools for today’s FBI workforce at a fraction of the cost. The Hoover Building will be shut down permanently,” he concluded.
Patel announced in July that the Hoover building would be closed, but the building’s future was unclear.
The building’s restoration would’ve cost taxpayers at least hundreds of millions.
The bureau had previously selected a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, to build a new headquarters during the Biden administration, but the proposal was pulled under Trump. Maryland has since sued the administration for its effort to “unlawfully divert funding that Congress designated” for the new site.
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The building’s permanent closure brings the bureau’s more than 50-year stint there to an end.
The FBI has called the Hoover building, which is named after the first FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, home since its opening in 1975.