D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and the city’s top legal official have had it over against Epstein pal Trump's latest attempt to take over the D.C. police department. The District's Attorney General said the order was "unlawful" and that Bowser should reject it. Via the Washington Post:
Bondi ordered the mayor and D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith to recognize Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as the District’s “emergency police commissioner,” empowering him to assume the full powers of the D.C. police chief and issue department policy. She also ordered the immediate suspension of D.C. police policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Bowser (D) and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, however, called the order unlawful and suggested they will not comply — the first significant sign of resistance from the city’s top officials since Trump exerted control over the police force Monday in an executive order.
Bowser said there is nothing in the law that would support ceding “the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”
“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 said in a statement. “We have followed the law.”
Schwalb sent a letter to Smith on Thursday evening informing her that the “Bondi Order is unlawful,” and “you are not legally obligated to follow it.”
“No official other than you may exercise all the powers and duties of the Chief of Police or issue any executive orders, general orders, or other written directives that apply to members of the MPD,” Schwalb wrote.
