By Jeremy Roebuck, Carol D. Leonnig and Perry Stein
FBI managers were told Friday that up to 1,500 staff and agents would be transferred out of the bureau’s Washington headquarters to satellite offices across the country, according to multiple peopleinformed about the message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly announced.
The information came hours before Kash Patel, the bureau’s newly confirmed director, took his oath of office. In a message Patel sent to all of the FBI’s more than 30,000 employees Friday morning, he hinted that such staffing changes could be coming.
“This will include streamlining our operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation,” Patel wrote, according to a person familiar with the message.
The more specific plan to relocate hundreds of staff and agents was outlined to top managers in a separate meeting after Patel’s message went out.
Roughly 1,000 agents and administrative employees would be relocated from the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington to field offices within cities that the Trump administration has designated as higher crime locations, said the people who weretold about that meeting. An additional 500 would be reassigned to the bureau’s large satellite headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama,the people said.
Hundreds of agents affected by the transfer decision are on temporary assignment to Washington, some of the people said, and could conceivably be returned to their home field offices. Other staff and agents who are based in the nation’s capital might not want to move.
Asked for comment on the personnel transfer plans, the FBI press office did not discuss specifics but said in a statement: “Director Patel has made clear his promise to the American public that FBI agents will be in communities focused on combatting violent crime. He has directed FBI leadership to implement a plan to put this promise into action.”
Patel — a former federal prosecutor and public defender who became an outspoken Trump surrogate and right-wing commentator — was narrowly confirmed by the Senate on Thursday in a 51-49 vote. He spent much of his first day on the job meeting with staff at headquarters, then taking his oath of office at a ceremonyin the Eisenhower Executive Office Building led by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Standing before a crowd of family members and well-wishers, Patel promised to deliver “accountability within the FBI” and “a singular system of justice for all Americans.”
“We will do it through rigorous constitutional oversight starting this weekend,” he said.
Known for his bombasticand at times inflammatory rhetoric, Patel accused news reporters covering the ceremony of having written “fake, malicious, slanderous and defamatory” stories about him during his confirmation. He alsoacknowledged feeling stunned to find himself leading the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.
“This is effin’ crazy,” he said. “Pam and I were just talking in the back, and we were like, ‘Do you believe this?’ We were on the campaign trail together. … Now, we’re here. She’s the attorney general. I’m the director of the FBI. This is insane.”
Patel struck a more confident note in his message to all FBI staff Friday morning, in which he stated his commitment “to pursuing justice and upholding the rule of law.” He wrote that the streamlining of headquarters operations was aimed at providing agents with “the tools and resources you need to keep our communities safe.”
The Hoover Building is the base for the bureau’s leadership team and also is the central location for large operational units, including the counterintelligence, national security and cyber teams. But the headquarters building also has a heavy contingent of non-agent staff who oversee and perform the FBI’s administrative functions, including human resources, budgeting, hiring, information technology and security operations.
Patel, before his nomination, had vowed to shutter the building and turn it into a “museum to the Deep State.” He made similar recommendations at his confirmation hearing and in appearances on conservative TV news shows.
“One of my biggest personal recommendations is … you send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building downrange to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers, and let the cops be cops on the streets across America,” Patel said in August during an appearance on “Stinchfield Tonight.”
During his confirmation hearing last month, Patel was asked about his previous comments suggesting he wanted the FBI’s headquarters emptied out and shuttered. His responses did not directly address whether he would actually shut the building down or seek to transform it into a museum, but he suggested that he believes the FBI’s workforce in Washington should go out into the country.
“A third of the workforce for the FBI works in Washington, D.C.,” Patel said. “I am fully committed to having that workforce go out into the interior of the country, where I live west of the Mississippi, and work with sheriff’s departments and local officers.”
In addition to fulfilling that promise, Patel laid out additional priorities in his message to staff, including working to restore trust in a law enforcement agency he’s criticized for being biased against conservatives and ensuring “a single standard of justice for all.”
“We will uphold ourselves to the Constitution,” he said later during his swearing-in ceremony. “The men and women at the FBI, I have your back because you have the backs of the American people. … You will be held to the same high standard. Any deviation from that standard will not be tolerated at this Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Mark Berman contributed to this report.
