AG Bondi walks back order to take federal control of DC police

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Justice Department and the D.C. Attorney General reached an agreement Friday to rollback part of the Trump administration’s effort to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department as part of an unprecedented exertion of federal authority over D.C. this week.

According to a newly drafted order by U.S. Attorney Pamela Bondi Friday evening, Drug Enforcement Agency administrator Terrance Cole will now serve as Bondi’s “designee” at the MPD rather than as the “emergency police commissioner,” as she ordered Thursday.

Bondi wrote that Cole will be responsible for “directing the Mayor of the District of Columbia to provide such services the MPD as the Attorney General deems necessary and appropriate.”

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the Trump administration Friday morning, challenging Bondi’s initial order issued Thursday, denouncing it as a “hostile takeover” of the city’s police department. Schwalb argued that the move, placing the department under the Trump administration’s direct control, violated the 1973 Home Rule Act, which granted D.C. a local government.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee, scheduled Friday’s hearing to determine whether to grant a temporary restraining order suspending Bondi’s order and restoring local control over the MPD.

She allowed the parties to convene over an hourlong break to hash out an agreement that would reshape Bondi’s order in a way that would not clearly violate the Home Rule Act’s requirements.

Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth indicated that the government would rescind the language ordering Cole be the emergency commissioner and instead empower him as a liaison between Bondi and the MPD.

“We’re just going to say Mr. Cole is the designee of the attorney general for the purposes of requesting services” from the MPD, Roth said.

According to Bondi’s Friday order, she directed D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to provide the city’s more than 3,000 MPD officers to assist in enforcing federal immigration law, support locating, apprehending and detaining noncitizens and provide access to police databases.

The revised order also eliminates language in which Bondi rescinded several MPD directives that limited offices’ participation in immigration law enforcement, which Reyes indicated was clearly unlawful and ordered be held in abeyance over the weekend.

She indicated she would consider whether Bondi could commandeer MPD officers for immigration violations next week.

During the hearing, Reyes noted that Friday’s arguments mark the first time a judge has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s authority under the Home Rule Act to effectively federalize the MPD by declaring a “crime emergency.”

Under her reading of the statute, Trump and Bondi could only request certain services from Bowser and the MPD, but Bowser could not deny those services once requested.

However, Reyes added, Bondi could not prevent MPD leadership from taking actions without Cole’s explicit permission or rescind certain MPD directives related to immigration enforcement.

“The statute would have no meaning at all if the president could just say ‘we’re taking over your police department,’” Reyes said.

Trump invoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act on Monday, placing Bondi in charge of the MPD, with Cole as interim federal police commissioner.

According to Roth, an executive order issued by MPD Chief Pamela Smith on Thursday — which instructed officers to share information about individuals not in their custody with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — effectively undermined the administration’s law enforcement efforts.

Specifically, Smith’s order maintained a prohibition on officers searching police databases solely for an individual’s immigration status, making inquiries about someone’s status “for the purpose of determining whether they have violated the civil immigration laws or for the purpose of enforcing civil immigration laws” and from arresting anyone based on federal immigration warrants.

The order cited D.C. law and the MPD’s code of conduct, the first of which Reyes noted the president could not rescind without Congress.

Roth argued that placing Cole atop the MPD was necessary to avoid such “chain-of-command issues.”

Outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, Schwalb, joined by Bowser, touted the proposed agreement as a “very important win for Home Rule.”

“The Home Rule charter and the Home Rule Act are very clear with respect to when the president can request limited services of MPD — limited by time, limited by emergency circumstances and limited for federal purposes,” Schwalb said. “And in all cases, those services must be requested to the mayor to be provided by the chief of police. Not a hostile takeover.”

“I am encouraged by the judge’s remarks and the federal government making the changes that were suggested, and the judge’s willingness to rule if that’s not satisfactory,” Bowser said.

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