On November 6, 2025, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown sued Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel and other administration officials for unlawfully sabotaging a more than decade-long effort that resulted in a decision to establish a new headquarters for the FBI in Greenbelt, Maryland. The suit argues that the FBI and the General Services Administration (GSA) violated federal law when they attempted to divert over a billion dollars that had been allocated to building new FBI headquarters in Maryland in favor of renovating an existing federal building in Washington, D.C.

In 2011, Congress directed the GSA to identify a location for an expansive headquarters complex for the FBI and established stringent site requirements as well as consultation and approval procedures. After years of complex negotiations and evaluation required by statute, GSA announced in 2023 that a site in Prince George’s County, Maryland, had been chosen. However, in July 2025, GSA and the FBI announced plans to abandon this site in favor of renovating a deficient building in Washington, D.C., in violation of the law. In the process of abandoning the plans, the GSA and the FBI attempted to divert more than $1 billion that Congress had specifically allocated for a purpose-built headquarters in Maryland. Maryland committed more than $300 million in infrastructure improvements in the expectation that the establishment of the new FBI headquarters would provide good-paying jobs and new development in the area. 

Maryland has asked the court to find that the administration’s attempt to move the new FBI headquarters to the 30-year-old Ronald Reagan Building and divert more than $1 billion violates statutes specific to the FBI’s relocation and the Administrative Procedure Act, and to require the administration to follow the law to establish the new headquarter complex in Maryland.

Maryland earned the new FBI 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. Now, the Trump administration wants to undermine that process, ignore the law, and divert more than $1 billion meant for a purpose-built headquarters – redirecting it instead to a nearly 30-year-old building unfit to accommodate the Bureau. We will not let the Trump administration strip away what Prince George’s County won and deny its communities the transformative benefits this project would bring. Attorney General Anthony Brown