By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday ordered the transfer of 1,500 staff out of its Washington headquarters, two sources familiar with the orders told Reuters.
Some 1,000 staff would be dispersed to field offices around the United States, with another 500 ordered to transfer to Huntsville, Alabama, the sources said, adding that the news was conveyed to employees at a Friday meeting.
The bureau had 9,414 employees in Washington as of June 2024, with 37,478 nationwide, according to figures kept by the federal government.
FBI Director Kash Patel was sworn into his new role on Friday, the day after the Senate confirmed him as President Donald Trump’s choice in a 51-49 vote – with two Republicans voting no, expressing concern about Patel’s past political advocacy and its potential effect on the FBI’s law enforcement mission.
“I promise you the following: there will be accountability within the FBI and outside of the FBI, and we will do it through rigorous constitutional oversight starting this weekend,” Patel said after being sworn in.
The FBI in a statement sent out after Reuters asked about the moves did not directly confirm or deny them, saying only, “Director Patel has made clear his promise to the American public that FBI agents will be in communities focused on combating violent crime. He has directed FBI leadership to implement a plan to put this promise into action.”
Patel takes charge as the Trump administration seeks to put its stamp on the FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, challenging decades-old traditions of independence and reorienting its mission toward Trump’s core priorities.
At least 75 career Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, who normally keep their roles from administration to administration, have either resigned, been fired or stripped of their posts in the first month of the Trump administration.
Patel telegraphed his plans for the shakeup in his book “Government Gangsters,” where he proposed moving the FBI’s headquarters out of Washington D.C. to prevent “institutional capture and curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship.”
Patel has said he will increase the FBI’s role in countering illegal immigration and violent crime, top Trump priorities, by “letting good cops be cops.” He has said he will scale back investigative work at the FBI’s Washington headquarters where many counterintelligence, national security and public corruption probes are housed.
The FBI has an office in Huntsville at Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. Army post that also houses Department of Defense and NASA offices.
Patel has been among the biggest boosters of assertions that a “deep state” within the government has pursued Trump in an attempt to sink his political prospects.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)
