The 15-14 vote was along party lines except for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) who voted with Democrats to halt the administration’s move.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to ban the Federal Bureau of Investigation from a planned move to the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C.
The July 10 vote approved a Justice Department funding bill amendment that blocked the Trump administration from keeping the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., through a change in destination for the bureau.
The Republican majority committee voted 15-14 to adopt language that would halt a move from the J. Edgar Hoover Building site to any location that isn’t the previously approved site in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was chosen by the General Services Administration in 2023.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) crossed party lines to join Democrats in supporting halting the administration’s proposed move.
“My understanding is that this has been a decision that was made just very recently,” Murkowski said ahead of the vote. “So I, for one, would like to know that this analysis has actually been going on for more than just a couple [of] months, that there’s actually been that effort to ensure that we’re going to move forward.”
The amendment to block the move was introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who said the previous decision to move the FBI to Maryland was made as a result of a lengthy process that involved Congressional criteria and lengthy discourse.
According to the lawmaker, the Trump administration did not perform adequate research and analysis before choosing to repurpose the Ronald Reagan building for the FBI headquarters.
“A few weeks ago, the administration just announced that it wanted to snatch the $555 million that had been set aside for down payment on that selected site and use it instead to move the FBI into the Ronald Reagan Building,” Van Hollen said during the markup session.
“No analysis done with respect to security requirements, no analysis done with respect to FBI mission requirements, no review of the underlying statute as to the purpose of the Ronald Reagan Building, no analysis of what they would do with current tenants in that building.”
