(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The District of Columbia’s top prosecutor is taking the White House to court, accusing President Donald Trump of staging a “hostile” takeover of the city’s police force.
On Friday, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s seizure of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an order installing Drug Enforcement Administration chief Terry Cole as D.C.’s new “emergency police commissioner.”
“The Administration’s unlawful actions are an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call D.C. home,” Schwalb wrote on X. “This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the District has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it.”
In his complaint, Schwalb described the move as an “unlawful assertion of authority” that could cause “immediate, devastating, and irreparable harms for the District.”
The legal fight comes days after Trump declared a “public safety emergency” in the capital, a measure that gives him power to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops and authorize federal law enforcement patrols for 30 days. That declaration comes despite federal data showing violent crime in D.C. is at its lowest point in three decades.
Bondi’s sweeping order, issued Thursday night, handed Cole “all of the powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police,” effectively sidelining MPD’s current leadership, including Chief Pamela Smith, who must now seek Cole’s approval before issuing directives.
The order also directs MPD to cooperate fully with federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, undermining Washington’s sanctuary city policies.
Schwalb warned the takeover would throw the department into chaos: “The order threatens to upend the command structure of MPD and wreak operational havoc within the department, endangering the safety of the public and law enforcement officers alike. There is no greater risk to public safety in a large, professional law enforcement organization like MPD than to not know who is in command.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also blasted the move, signaling defiance. “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. We have followed the law. In reference to the U.S. Attorney General’s order, there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official,” she wrote on X.
Trump’s push for control of D.C.’s police follows his personal outrage over the alleged assault of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency, who was attacked in a suspected carjacking involving two Maryland teens.
