House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has asked House Appropriations Committee Chairman Kay Granger (R-Texas) to withhold funds intended for the design and construction of a new FBI headquarters complex somewhere in the Washington suburbs.
But Mr. Jordan’s request doesn’t reflect a desire on his part to keep the FBI at its present location in the J. Edgar Hoover Building located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the nation’s capital. Rather, Mr. Jordan wants to move the United States’ premier law enforcement agency out of the Washington region entirely, perhaps to Alabama.
“The Committee remains concerned about the politicization of federal law enforcement power emanating from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The centralization of FBI operations in the National Capitol Region has led to duplication of activity best left to the respective field offices, contributed to reduced autonomy in local field offices, and allowed improper political influence to taint law enforcement investigations and activity,” Mr. Jordan told Ms. Granger in a July 11 letter obtained by The Epoch Times.
“None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to build a new FBI headquarters. In addition, the FBI is directed to submit an operational plan within 90 days to move the FBI Headquarters out of the National Capital Region. The operational plan should also consider the existing resources and infrastructure available at the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal Campus in Huntsville, AL.,” Mr. Jordan continued.
Mr. Jordan’s request to Mr. Granger regarding the FBI headquarters is just one of 39 funding actions the judiciary panel chief is seeking as the House of Representatives moves 12 appropriations bills in a race against a looming Sept. 30 deadline.
That’s the end of the current fiscal year, and if the House and Senate haven’t sent the 12 measures to President Joe Biden for signature by then, the federal government could face having to shut down until the funds required to reopen are approved.
Notable among the other 38 funding requests—all of which are presented as “prohibitions on use of funds”—are barring the Department of Justice (DOJ) from using any tax dollars to investigate “politically sensitive” individuals until the department agrees to put career civil servants, not political appointees, in charge of such investigations.
“None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act shall be used to conduct a politically sensitive investigation until the Department of Justice establishes a policy requiring non-partisan career staff to oversee such investigations. Politically sensitive investigations include those investigations of elected officials and their family members, political candidates and their family members, political organizations, religious organizations, and members of the media,” the letter reads.
And federal officials throughout the government would be barred by a proposal from Mr. Jordan from using funding “to label communications by United States persons as misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information, whether such labeling is done only by Federal personnel or in conjunction with private entities or individuals.”
The requests also include one barring the use of any tax dollars for paying any official “who is found to have retaliated against a whistleblower or suppressed a Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation employee’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment.”
There is a request that no funds be allowed to be used by the DOJ “to implement a policy that discourages U.S. Marshals Service employees or personnel from fully enforcing” laws against harassing or injuring Supreme Court justices.
Mr. Jordan also wrote that no tax dollars be used by the DOJ’s “Executive Office for Immigration Review until [the DOJ] provides to the House Committee on the Judiciary all documents and communications referring or relating to the decision(s) to terminate the employment of each immigration judge whose employment was terminated during or at the end of their probationary period, between January 20, 2021, and the present.”
“None of the funds for DOJ can be spent until the Senate and House judiciary committees are provided all documents they have requested concerning the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and none of the funds can be used by DOJ to enter into contracts or cooperative agreements to provide legal representation for aliens in removal proceedings,” the letter reads.
There is a proposed prohibition of the Executive Office for Immigration Review from conducting any “diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings,” and a bar on funding until the office “provides to the House and Senate Committees on the Judiciary an explanation as to why it no longer posts publicly its immigration judge hiring procedures and until such procedures are posted publicly.”
The judiciary panel chief is asking House appropriators to deny funding for the enforcement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ pistol brace rule and bar the State Department from using any tax dollars “to oppose Israeli judicial reform efforts.”
Mr. Jordan is a longtime pro-life advocate, and his lengthy list of appropriations requests includes a comprehensive restatement of the Hyde Amendment, the measure first adopted by Congress in 1976 to ban federal funding of abortions, in the context of federal immigration policies and programs.
The letter reads, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act for ‘U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’ may be used to pay for or facilitate an abortion, except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus would be carried to term, or in the case of rape or incest and none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act for ‘U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’ may be used to require any person to perform, or facilitate in any way the performance of, any abortion.”
