FBI Director Kash Patel said Friday that the agency is moving 1,500 staff members to other facilities throughout the nation, leaving its long-standing headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
“This FBI is leaving the Hoover building because this building is unsafe for our workforce,” Patel told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview.
“We want the American men and women to know if you’re going 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,” he said in a teaser clip that will air in full on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Patel did not provide a timeline for the relocation or the new site of the bureau’s headquarters, nor did he elaborate on the safety risks associated with the enormous brutalist building on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Congress.
President Trump has been thinking about reconstruction for years since the Hoover building, which was finished in 1975 after more than ten years of construction, is located on a block of great real estate.
Trump hinted in March that 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.”
It’s unclear where a temporary office might be located.
“Look, the FBI is 38,000 when we are fully manned, which we are not. In the national capital region, in the 50-mile radius around Washington, DC, there were 11,000 FBI employees. That’s like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn’t happen here,” Patel told Bartiromo.
“So we are taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out. Every state is getting a plus-up. 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 work at the FBI because we want to fight violent crime and we want to be sent out into the country to do it.”
He added: “in the next 3, 6, 9 months we’re going to be doing that hard.”
Patel has been busy this week.
The FBI director noted in a social media post on Thursday that federal agencies were looking into a since-deleted tweet from former Director James Comey that many took as a threat against President Donald Trump’s life.
“We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey, directed at President Trump. We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran. Primary jurisdiction is with SS on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support,” Patel tweeted.
Comey posted a photo of what appeared to be seashells arranged to form two numbers “86 47” — which many took as a call to assassinate Trump, the 47th president. “86” is slang for a “hit.” In the post he also wrote, “cool shell formation on my beachwalk.”
Later, the former FBI director fired by Trump early in his first term for malfeasance on the job posted another message to X, claiming he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.”
Trump was asked about the post in an interview with Fox News in which he criticized Comey for claiming ignorance.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination,” Trump said. “He wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, posted on X: “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that what Comey posted was a threat that should land him in jail.