The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday, in response to what the district called the federal government’s “unlawful assertions of authority.” The lawsuit seeks to ensure that control of the Metropolitan Police Department “remains with the people of the District of Columbia.”
Citing an order Thursday from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the district seeks a court ruling to halt and overturn the Bondi Order that purports to assert control over local law enforcement activities. One of the specific forms of legal relief that the district seeks is for a court to rule that Bondi can’t install Drug Enforcement Administration head Terrance Cole to lead the local police department, as she has attempted to do.
“The Bondi Order directly interferes with and directs policies and enforcement related to purely local matters,” the district argues in its complaint, filed in federal district court in Washington.
The federal government’s “unlawful assertions of authority will create immediate, devastating, and irreparable harms for the District,” the complaint reads. “Most critically,” it says, “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.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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