Will Kash Patel’s plans for the FBI Headquarters affect Huntsville, Alabama?
The skirmish is part of the GOP's broader war against what they see as the FBI and Justice Department's targeting of President Trump and his allies.
May 23, 2025
A plan announced by FBI Director Kash Patel this weekend to move about 1,500 bureau employees out of the Washington headquarters won’t affect plans for increasing the FBI workforce in Huntsville.
In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, Patel said the employees will be moved outside the capital region.
“This FBI is leaving the Hoover building, because this building is unsafe for our workforce,” Patel said.
About 11,000 employees, or a third of the bureau’s total workforce, are currently assigned in and around D.C.
“A third of the crime doesn’t happen here, so we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out,” Patel said. “Every state is getting a plus up.”
It’s the latest development in more than a decade of talk about moving the FBI headquarters out of the Washington D.C. office building.
Will this affect the FBI’s plans to escalate its Huntsville workforce?
No, according to a bureau spokesperson.
Patel has already made an order to transfer 500 workers from Washington D.C. to Redstone Arsenal who should arrive by “the end of the year,” Patel said at the time.
Kash Patel: Redstone Arsenal needs $160 million in facilities to bring 1,400 FBI employees to Huntsville
During a budget hearing for the FBI, Patel was questioned by Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville, regarding the timeline for when more FBI employees would be sent to the agency’s north Alabama location.
“No,” the spokesperson said, “the 500 number is still the right number.”
Earlier this month, FBI Director Kash Patel said approximately 1,400 FBI employees could be coming to Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal over the next three years.
That’s after a $160 million building project to finish training facilities.
In the interview, Bartiromo asked Patel if all of the 1,500 moving out of the D.C. office are going to Alabama.
He called it “one of the crown jewels of the FBI.”
“It’s on a military campus of 38,000 acres in Huntsville, Alabama. And the FBI built five new buildings there and a kinetic cyber training facility, a long-range facility. Our terrorism explosive device center is there. So when you go and you want to become a new FBI agent, we send you to Quantico. When you’re in the job for a couple of years and you need advanced training, you go to Huntsville,” he said.
“So, a chunk of them are going there because it’s essentially headquarters too, for lack of a better word. But the rest of the folks, we have looked at the map. And we said, where are the worst crime spots in America? That’s how we’re choosing where the agents and intel folks go.”
Of course, Huntsville has been spoken of as a potential site for another FBI headquarters.
Alabama congressman joins call to move FBI HQ to Huntsville
Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and other congressional Republicans have stated support for moving the complex to Redstone Arsenal.
Congressman Gary Palmer, a Republican from Hoover and chair of the House GOP Policy Committee, chimed in and threw his support behind the idea first floated by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan as part of a GOP response to what the party sees as a “weaponization” of the U.S. Department of Justice by Democrats.
While it appears at this point to perhaps be the longest of longshots to bring the FBI HQ to its multi-billion dollar campus at Redstone Arsenal, Palmer and Sen. Tommy Tuberville have offered their backing.
WATCH: Coach Tommy Tuberville on X: "The FBI needs a new place to call home, and there’s no place better than the Rocket City. I look forward to showing our next FBI Director, @Kash_Patel, the state-of-the-art facilities at Redstone Arsenal. https://t.co/uiim0jgVeN" / X
Last month, U.S. Rep. Dale Strong said in a constituents meeting that relocating to Huntsville was “not a good move for us nor for the government,” Strong said.
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This is "part" of draining the swamp that is Washington DC. Democrat Controlled - DC