The White House is proposing to spend more than $2 billion in funding for a new FBI headquarters, infusing cash into a stalled effort to replace the downtown Washington building.
The allocation, which would have to be approved by Congress, comes tucked inside President Donald Trump’s new infrastructure proposal and amid a war Trump is waging against the law enforcement agency’s top officials.
In a statement Monday, the FBI said it had submitted a report to the Senate on a “nationally focused consolidation strategy for FBI headquarters” that recommended the construction of a new building on the bureau’s current site on Pennsylvania Avenue. As part of the report’s proposal, the FBI would relocate operations and personnel from the current facility as construction was underway, the agency said.
“The FBI believes this proposed consolidation strategy enhances mission resiliency, continuity of operations, and will provide the Bureau with the agility necessary to meet future needs,” the agency said.
The General Services Administration, the government agency that oversees federal real estate, said over the summer it had scrapped long-standing plans to construct a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs outside the nation’s capital as a result of funding gaps.
Although the GSA initially asked Congress for $1.4 billion to fund the project in the 2017 fiscal year, the agency said in July, Congress appropriated only $523 million.
On Monday, Justice Department officials said the President’s 2018 infrastructure plan included a $2.2 billion request for the FBI project that would be combined with funds held over from the original scrapped plans.