FBI Director Kash Patel announced in a Fox News broadcast Friday that he’s redeploying 1,500 FBI agents, analysts and other personnel from Washington to posts throughout the country, and shutting down the bureau’s storied headquarters because it is “unsafe for our workforce.”

Patel has talked frequently about moving FBI personnel out of the nation’s capital and even shutting down the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building and making it into some form of a “deep state” museum.

But his comments to Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo appear to be the most definitive to date in terms of his plans for the FBI and the building named after the bureau’s longest-serving director.

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    The FBI has been trying to get out of that building for at least eight or nine years. The intention was to move to a new building in the DC suburbs but Trump killed that plan in 2017. He wanted them in that building because it was near his hotel, I gather. The FBI then put forward a plan to modernize the J. Edgar Hoover building but the cost estimates on doing so appear to not have been, shall we say, entirely accurate. I guess the new plan is just to dump the D.C. office all together. Trump is making enough on meme-coins that he doesn’t care about the hotel revenue.

    I honestly cannot help but assume that the Trump admin has some nefarious scheme in motion that will somehow hurt the American people and undermine the nations security, they always do after all, but that building has been falling apart for well over a decade.

    • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      They gonna sell it to Russia who will setup a kgb office there so they can get orders to their trained monkeys in congress faster

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    And when a bunch of the people slated for relocation can’t move because of family/finance obligations… “Oh dear, I guess we’ll have to let you go and replace you with one of the maga fanatics who signed up back in 2024 to work for the federal government!”

    This is so obviously an exercise in packing government agencies/departments with loyalists. Professional expertise or competence be damned.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Yep I was about to say the whole point of it is moving to a location less fortified and secure to make it easier for our enemies. There’s really very little other reason.

      • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago
        1. He wants them spread out so it’s harder to hold them physically accountable.
        2. Why keep them in a DC office when they could be beating the pavement and hurting brown people with ICE?
        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Not that they wouldn’t like that concept. But we do also have Regional FBI offices. This is just a headquarters.

          • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            Yes field offices are a thing, but DC likely houses the most senior analysts and leadership. When Kash says that the JEH office “isn’t safe” I’m inclined to believe he isn’t strictly lying, but that he’s omitting what he’s trying to keep his goons safe from.

            And the deportation effort desperately needs bodies. The FBI is already waist deep in that. If you’ve ever seen photos or footage of these immigration arrests it’s alphabet soup: FBI, ATF, DEA…

  • lennybird@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    I’m still extremely worried of a false flag crisis… Either that or dropping our guard down to such a degree that it invites a crisis to exploit (E.g., Bibi’s ignoring clear Intel reports of impending Oct 7th).