A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called for an inspector general investigation into a potential conflict of interest by the Biden-administration political appointee who selected a site in Maryland over Virginia for a new FBI headquarters.
During a House Oversight Committee hearing, a coalition of Republicans and Democrats grilled GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan over concerns about favoritism in the agency’s controversial decision to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Md., over Springfield, Va., even though a panel of experts unanimously recommended the Virginia site.
The decision to choose the Greenbelt site over the panel’s recommendation was made by Nina Albert, a Biden-administration political appointee who used to work for the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, the agency that owns the Greenbelt site. Albert has since left the GSA for a job in Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser’s office.
“At the eleventh hour, a political appointee was given the role of decision maker. She then changed the criteria, reversed the recommendation of career experts, then promptly left for a new job. The process, or lack thereof, raises many questions,” said Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), the committee chair, who added that “GSA is facing a crisis of confidence.”
Carnahan defended the choice of Greenbelt, calling it the “best” for both the FBI and the government. “I am proud of the process that we ran,” she said. “I stand behind the decision of our team, and of all the public servants who carefully followed that process and selected the site most advantageous to the government.”
National Review previously reported that FBI director Christopher Wray expressed concerns about the site-selection process in a letter to GSA leaders and in a message last week to FBI staff. In his memo to staff, Wray wrote that FBI leaders “have concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own selection plan.”
Congressman Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat whose district includes Springfield, said on Tuesday that the criteria used in the site-selection process was changed over the summer and it “certainly seemed to favor one party over another.”
The GSA, he said, diminished the weight of the proximity and transportation criteria, and increased the weight of the cost and equity criteria.
“Even with this weighted change that clearly favored one party over another, the [three-person] panel of experts — two from GSA, one from FBI — unanimously, nonetheless, chose” the Springfield site, he said. “Your appointee, this Ms. Nina Albert who is no longer with the agency, parachuted in, she unilaterally overturned and redirected the evaluation of these new weighted criteria that the [three-person] expert panel had reviewed and evaluated.”
Carnahan took issue with the idea that Albert overturned the panel, which she said was only responsible for making a recommendation. As the senior real estate professional at GSA, it was Albert’s responsibility to make the ultimate decision.
“In fact, sometimes those decisions are different,” she said.
Carnahan said that Albert was “fully vetted” before she joined GSA because of her connection to the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, which owns the Greenbelt site. After learning of Wray’s concerns, she said, she had GSA lawyers review the process.
“We ran a fair and transparent process,” she said. “That was my directive to our team, and we did that in the extreme.”
Congressman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, questioned how often an expert site-selection panel’s recommendation is not supported by a senior decision maker. Carnahan said it actually happened previously in the process of selecting the new FBI headquarters.
In 2014, the panel tasked with narrowing potential sites down to three finalists selected three Maryland sites. “The site selection authority, the equivalent of Ms. Albert, decided that wasn’t right, and picked two in Maryland and one in Virginia, the site in Springfield,” Carnahan said.
During the hearing, Jordan and Representative Clay Higgins (R., La.) took issue with building a new FBI headquarters at either the Maryland or Virginia sites.
“I don’t think we should be rewarding the FBI, the same FBI that said pro-life Catholics were extremists, the same FBI that retaliated against whistleblowers, the same FBI that censored Americans,” Jordan said. He proposed building it in Huntsville, Ala.
Higgins said he would oppose building a new FBI building “with every fiber of my being.”
“In fact,” he said, “I think the FBI as an institution should be taken down brick by brick by oppressive brick and be rebuilt from the ground up, literally.”
Maryland Democrats on the committee defended the selection of the Greenbelt site as the most accessible, the lowest cost to taxpayers, and the best opportunity to make an impact in the Greater D.C. metro area.
Representative Kweisi Mfume said the site-selection process was “very, very, very transparent,” and you “can’t please everybody.” Representative Jamie Raskin said the mix of Republicans and Democrats opposing the Greenbelt site are “some very strange, indeed bizarre bedfellows.”