Patel on moving FBI workforce out of DC: ‘It’s pretty simple’

    By
    Emily Hallas
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    FBI Director Kash Patel appears before the House Judiciary Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. 
    FBI Director Kash Patel appears before the House Judiciary Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.  (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

    Patel defended the FBI’s decision to move roughly 1,500 agents from the agency’s Washington, D.C., base and disperse them nationwide.

    In response to questioning from Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC), Patel said, “It’s pretty simple.”

    “You don’t even have to be in law enforcement to know that if you put cops with other cops, they’re going to do cop work. And what was needed in the communities out there was more cops,” he told Knott. “What was not needed in the bloated bureaucracy of Washington, D.C., was a third of the FBI workforce, because a third of the crime does not happen in the Washington, D.C., NCR area.”