Va. officials formally request investigation of FBI HQ selection

The letter alleged that the reversal was made for political considerations against the FBI’s wishes, noting that the selection criteria was changed in July, about when a political appointee inside the GSA who had previously overseen land acquisitions for Metro was installed as head of the selection process, replacing a career GSA official.

The following month, the official unilaterally overturned the panel’s recommendation, making changes to the scoring that benefited the Greenbelt site and hurt the Springfield choice, the Virginia officials said. The official has since left the agency.

“There is overwhelming evidence suggesting that the General Services Administration (GSA) administered a site selection process fouled by political considerations and alleged impropriety — one that was repeatedly curated to arrive at a predetermined outcome,” read the letter, which was signed by nine of Virginia’s Democratic and Republican House members and its two Democratic senators. (Republican Reps. Bob Good and Ben Cline of Virginia did not sign.)

“Throughout the site selection deliberations, GSA suppressed, dismissed, and overrode the judgment and recommendations of career officials from GSA and the FBI,” the letter said.

With billions of dollars in taxpayer revenue and bragging rights at stake, the years-long process to choose the FBI’s new home has been dogged by disputes between officials in Virginia and Maryland over which site best matched the agency’s needs and, more recently, how equity factored into the decision.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who led Maryland’s efforts to lure the FBI for a decade — even holding up an omnibus spending bill last year to add language that would reconsider the criteria used to pick a new headquarters site — on Wednesday responded to the call for an investigation by reiterating support for the Greenbelt site. The decision, he said, offered “the lowest cost to taxpayers, best access to transit options, most construction-schedule certainty, and furthering the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to equity.”

Hoyer noted that in 2014 a similar process played out at the GSA, when a three-member panel did not include Springfield as a finalist for the FBI, and a site administrator overruled the panel to include it.

“I did not object because additional sites provided competition in this process,” he said in an email. “I believe any IG investigation would find what the GSA has told us — that this selection process was done by the book and according to the terms of the Site Selection Plan. Team Maryland looks forward to welcoming the FBI to Greenbelt, Maryland as soon as possible.”

Maryland officials responded forcefully to allegations of impropriety last week by saying the FBI should not make unproven allegations, with Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) saying FBI Director Christopher A. Wray “should know the difference between evidence and innuendo.”

Gov. Wes Moore (D) reiterated Maryland’s view that the allegations of political meddling are unwarranted, saying in a statement Wednesday that “Maryland is ready to move forward to provide a modern, consolidated headquarters that the men and women of the FBI deserve.”

“The GSA awarded the new headquarters based on merit, and unsubstantiated claims won’t change the end result,” he said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the request was baseless and would be a waste of tax dollars. “We are confident any objective review would affirm what GSA has already shown: Greenbelt was selected on the merits and this process was done by the books,” he said, cautioning that such a review would amount to a delay tactic.

In an emailed statement late Wednesday, a GSA spokesman said the agency welcomed a review.

“As a part of our long-standing commitment to transparency, we proactively and publicly released our site selection plan, decision-making materials, and results of our legal review evaluating the FBI’s concerns,” the statement reads. “We carefully followed the requirements and process, and stand behind GSA’s final site selection decision.”

The Virginia delegation’s letter builds on concerns that Wray raised about the process in a letter to his staff last month calling on the GSA to scrap its Maryland selection and begin anew over concerns about the former GSA official’s actions.

The Virginia delegation said the FBI director “raised serious objections” to the decision to place the official in charge of the selection process, citing potential conflicts he said were never fully addressed by the GSA.

“In defending the indefensible, GSA has decided to proceed with the selection of Greenbelt over the objections of its client agency, the FBI,” the Virginia delegation’s letter states. “These facts, when taken together, paint an ugly picture of a fatally flawed procurement that demands further investigation.”

The FBI — located in the large, Brutalist-style J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW since 1975 — has said its building is deteriorating and a new headquarters is needed to consolidate 11,000 personnel from more than a dozen locations around the region.

The GSA announced its decision to select the Greenbelt site this month, which was met with immediate outrage by Virginia officials and cheers from officials in Prince George’s, a majority-Black county that has long sought economic parity with its neighbors in the Washington region.

Maryland officials said the $3 billion facility would further the Biden administration’s goal to invest in communities overlooked by the federal government, a point Moore, the state’s first Black governor, made in conversations with the president and bureaucrats.

A new headquarters campus must be funded by Congress and will take years to build. A developer has not yet been selected.

Lateshia Beachum contributed to this report.