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No, FBI headquarters in Washington isn’t closed
If Your Time is short
- The FBI headquarters building and its field offices are open, according to the agency.
- People have been seen coming and going from the building. The video used as evidence in making this claim was taken from the side of the FBI headquarters, not the main entrance.
The narrator of a video taken from a city street says he’s standing across from an FBI building in Washington at "5:25 on June 14."
"I’m going to show you here this is the FBI building and it’s completely closed," he says. "No one’s in there. In fact it’s even walled off. You can’t get inside. So that’s what the FBI building looks like here in Washington."
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
We called the FBI headquarters in Washington to ask about the claim. The person who answered the phone told us she was speaking from the agency’s Washington building.
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The FBI later sent PolitiFact this statement: "The FBI headquarters building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW is open and fully operational, as are all of our field offices."
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The Associated Press reported that a reporter who works near the building confirmed that people were coming and going from the building on June 14 and in the days since.
The video wasn’t taken from Pennsylvania Avenue but from the side of the FBI building on E St NW. The Google Maps street view from this vantage point — taken in November 2019 — is similar to what appears in the Facebook video.
We rate this claim False.
Our Sources
Facebook post, June 14, 2021
Google Maps view of the FBI building from E Street, visited June 17, 2021
Associated Press, FBI headquarters in Washington is open as usual, June 16, 2021
Statement from the FBI, June 16, 2021
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No, FBI headquarters in Washington isn’t closed
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