Nov. 7 (UPI) — Maryland has sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation after federal officials backed out on their plan to build a new FBI facility in the Greenbelt area.
The lawsuit cited spending mandated by Congress and alleged the Trump administration willfully ignored that after it moved some $555 million in already-approved federal funding following a multi-year bidding process.
“The Trump administration has no grounds to ignore this selection, or redirect even one penny that Congress specifically appropriated for construction of the competitively selected site,” Maryland’s Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks said in a statement.
The suit, led by Maryland’s Democratic Attorney General Anthony Brown, stated the General Services Administration “duly completed the site selection process in 2023 and selected the Greenbelt site.”
In July, the FBI revealed its new headquarters instead will be at the Ronald Reagan Building Complex one block east of the White House, instead of a newly-constructed suburban facility following the closure of USAID offices in the nation’s capital.
FBI Director Kash Patel claimed it was the “most cost-effective and resource-efficient way to carry out our mission.”
But Maryland officials argued the federal government was already tied to the project and could not arbitrarily end it.
“Maryland earned the new F.B.I. headquarters through a fair and transparent selection process that took more than 10 years — a rigorous evaluation that identified Greenbelt as the site best suited to meet the FBI’s security, operational space and mission needs,” Brown said Thursday in Largo, M.d., at a media conference.
State officials noted that Congress set aside additional funds for the project after the decision.
“In July 2025, however, the FBI and the GSA abruptly announced that they had selected a new site, the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and took steps to redirect the previously appropriated funds toward developing an FBI headquarters” at the Reagan complex, the state wrote in its in its lawsuit.
The project ultimately pitted Maryland against neighboring Virginia for the new site.
According to the state, those actions “flouted” the “explicit direction” of Congress to choose a site from three sites, as well as “other specific statutory directives concerning the selection of the site and the use of the funds.”
“Yet the administration clearly intends to do just that, while refusing to answer basic questions around the costs to taxpayers and security of the new site, or provide additional details on their plans,” the state’s two senators added.
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