Jim Jordan to suggest moving FBI HQ to Alabama as part of crusade against the agency – report

WASHINGTON, D. C. – U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan is suggesting moving the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters to Alabama as part of his crusade against what he calls the FBI’s “politicized bureaucracy.”

The Champaign County Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday proposed an amendments to an upcoming spending bill that would strip the FBI of money for a new headquarters, and urged that it consider relocating its headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama.

Jordan has repeatedly claimed that the FBI has been “weaponized” for political purposes and that it abused its law-enforcement powers to hamstring former President Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency. On Monday, Jordan’s committee released a report that claimed the FBI improperly colluded with Ukraine’s intelligence agency to ask that particular social media accounts be taken down.

FBI Director Christopher Wray is scheduled to testify at a Wednesday Judiciary Committee hearing that Jordan is convening to “examine the politicization of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”

In a Tuesday letter to House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger of Texas, Jordan stated “the centralization of FBI operations in the National Capitol Region has led to duplication of activity best left to the respective field offices, contributed to reduced autonomy in local field offices, and allowed improper political influence to taint law enforcement investigations and activity.”

Claiming that the FBI’s leadership has engaged in “egregious abuses, misallocation of federal law-enforcement resources, and misconduct within the leadership ranks of the FBI,” Jordan’s letter asks Granger to “eliminate any funding for the FBI that is not absolutely essential for the agency to execute its mission, including as a starting point eliminating taxpayer funding for any new FBI headquarter facility and instead examining options for relocating the FBI’s headquarters outside of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”

His letter asks that the FBI be directed to submit an operational plan within 90 days to move its headquarters outside the Washington, D.C., area, and that the operational plan consider making use of infrastructure available at the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal Campus in Huntsville, Alabama

Although such a proposal might gain some support among Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives, it would stand no chance of passage in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

The FBI’s current Washington, D.C., headquarters has long been scheduled for a replacement. A 2022 spending bill approved by Congress instructed the federal agency responsible for government real estate to select a site “as expeditiously as possible” from one of three that were previously identified during a 2016 proposal to move the agency: Greenbelt, Maryland.; Landover, Maryland.; and Springfield, Virginia.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported Jordan’s plans, he would prefer to see the FBI based at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. Army post where the FBI already has a growing campus that is home to more than 1,000 employees.

“Although Democrats view the proposal as nothing more than a dig at the FBI, Jordan argues investigators would be less likely to be infected by what he sees as liberal politics if the bureau were based in deep-red Alabama than alongside other government and national-security agencies in and around the nation’s capital,” the publication says.

The FBI began exploring a relocation of its headquarters more than a decade ago, but the effort was abandoned soon after Trump became president. Democrats accused Trump of interfering with the decision to protect business for a hotel he owned near the FBI’s current headquarters. That hotel is now a Waldorf Astoria.

Sabrina Eaton writes about the federal government and politics in Washington, D.C., for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.