Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said he will be leading an investigation into President Biden’s decision to keep the Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning former President Trump’s decision to relocate it to Alabama.
Rogers was already investigating the Biden administration for its delay in making the move to Alabama, amid speculation the president was shifting course.
“The Biden administration’s shameful delay to finalize the permanent basing decision for U.S. Space Command warranted the opening of a Congressional investigation,” he said in a statement Monday.
“I will continue this investigation to see if they intentionally misled the Armed Services Committee on their deliberate taxpayer-funded manipulation of the selection process.”
Some officials have said Alabama’s restrictive abortion laws played into the Space Command HQ decision, but the White House said it was motivated entirely by concerns that a major move would undermine military readiness.
Rogers and other Alabama officials say government reviews found the Huntsville, Ala., location to be the best fit for the Space Command, while Colorado Springs was further down the list.
Gen. James Dickinson, the head of Space Command, played a role in convincing Biden against relocating the base, U.S. officials told the Associated Press.
The Space Command was reestablished in 2019, and Democrats accused Trump of playing politics with his decision to move the headquarters to Alabama, a red state, in the final days of his presidency. Colorado backed Biden in the 2020 election.
Since the beginning of his term, Biden ordered reviews of Trump’s decision, which did not find anything improper, but found the former president could have abided by better practices in the selection process.
“From the minute he took office, I have worried that Joe Biden would continuously put far-left politics and appeasement of the woke crowd above national security,” Rogers wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He has continuously validated those worries.”