Congress wades into FBI headquarters conflict, calls for inspector general inquiry

Lawmakers made bipartisan calls on Tuesday for an inspector general investigation into the recent selection of Greenbelt, Maryland, as the site of the FBI’s new multibillion-dollar headquarters, claiming the decision process had been tainted.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said during a House Oversight Committee hearing that he wanted the inspector general for the General Services Administration, the agency that led the selection process, to “look at this process and how it can be so contaminated as to skew the ultimate decision.”

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Connolly’s remarks were directed toward GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan, who appeared before the committee for routine questioning about her agency’s management of federal workspaces.

Connolly represents a portion of northern Virginia, including Springfield, which was the unanimous favorite for the FBI headquarters site before Nina Albert, a President Joe Biden-appointed GSA official, stepped in and ruled in favor of placing the facility in Greenbelt.

Albert was a vice president at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and the abrupt shift to the Greenbelt location, led by Albert, raised conflict of interest concerns because the location is partly owned by the WMATA and much closer to a WMATA station than Springfield.

FBI Director Christopher Wray first raised alarm about a lack of “transparency and fairness” in the selection process last week after the decision was announced.

Connolly echoed Wray’s concerns, observing that site selection criteria had also changed in favor of Greenbelt, and still, a panel unanimously found Springfield was the best option. He pointed out that Albert’s deviations from the panel’s assessment directly led to the GSA choosing Greenbelt.

“It looks like she overturned [the panel’s decision] to me,” Connolly said. “I read the report, a lot of personal pronouns in there, by the way, I, I, I.”

Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who was overseeing the hearing, agreed with Connolly and said he planned to ask the GSA inspector general for an investigation.

“GSA installed a political appointee who overruled the decision of a panel of career officials originally charged with making the selection,” Comer said. “It’s now clear to me why these major changes were made in the eleventh hour.”

Several other lawmakers grilled Carnahan on the headquarters, but she defended the process and said the GSA’s legal counsel had reviewed it upon learning of Wray’s dissatisfaction with it.

Carnahan said the points Wray raised had “no merit.”

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“I will tell you that we fully vetted Ms. Albert because we knew of her prior employment at WMATA,” Carnahan said, adding that “she was hired as the top public building official and real estate expert at GSA.”

The GSA inspector general’s office told the Washington Examiner it was aware of the matter but had no further information to share.