Washington, D.C.’s mayor and attorney general both rebuked Attorney General Pam Bondi’s move to name an “emergency police commissioner” for the district.
Bondi said in a directive issued Thursday evening that DEA boss Terry Cole will assume “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police.”
The Metropolitan Police Department “must receive approval from Commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders, Bondi said.
However, Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb both pushed back on the order.
“Let us be clear about what the law requires during a Presidential declared emergency: it requires the mayor of Washington, DC to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President,” Bowser wrote on social media.
“We have followed the law.”
Schwalb declared Bondi’s move illegal.
“It is my opinion that the Bondi order is unlawful, and that you are not legally obligated to follow it,” Schwalb wrote in a legal opinion to D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith.
He wrote that the president has the authority “to direct the mayor to provide” police department services to address an emergency, but the law does not give the president the authority to “alter the chain of command,” to “rescind or suspend” orders, or to “otherwise determine how the District pursues purely local law enforcement.”
Schwalb based his determination on the Home Rule Act, which granted Washington its limited self-government.
Bondi’s order also rescinded Washington policies that restrict the local police from aiding in immigration enforcement, The New York Times reported.
Her order followed an earlier directive from Smith, who loosened restrictions on whether local police officers could talk to federal agents about the immigration status of people they stopped. That order, though, also reiterated longstanding sanctuary city policy preventing police from pursuing immigration cases.
Trump on Monday put Washington’s police department under federal control and ordered the National Guard to deploy to the nation’s capital to combat what he said is a wave of lawlessness.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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