Attorney General Pam Bondi’s move to install a new “emergency police commissioner” in Washington, D.C., has been met with immediate opposition from the capital’s top officials.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb criticized as illegal Bondi’s order parachuting in Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to take over the city’s police force—and suggested they will not recognize his authority.
Bondi issued a directive Thursday stating that Cole will assume “all of the powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police” and will have the authority to direct all members of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
Under the order, MPD’s current leadership, including Chief Pamela Smith, must seek Cole’s approval before issuing any further directives to the city’s police force.
The move marks an escalation in the federal takeover of D.C. ordered by President Donald Trump, who claims the capital is one of the “most dangerous cities anywhere in the world,” despite official data showing D.C.’s violent crime rate is at its lowest in 30 years.
On Monday, Trump declared a “public safety emergency,” deployed hundreds of National Guard troops, and ordered federal law enforcement to patrol the capital’s streets for at least 30 days.
In a statement, Bowser said the law is “clear” on what is required during a presidentially declared emergency, and that the Trump administration is not following it by installing Cole as emergency police commissioner.
“It requires the mayor of Washington, D.C., to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President,” Bowser said.
“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.”
In a letter to Smith, Schwalb advised the MPD chief that Bondi’s order is “unlawful, and that 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, adding that the directive is “ultra vires,” a Latin phrase meaning an act carried out without legal power or authority.
Trump’s hardline crackdown on D.C. follows an alleged assault against Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a 19-year-old former employee of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), by two teenagers in D.C., a case the president has taken a personal interest in.
Bowser and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
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