Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Monday remarks about the deployment of troops on the streets of Washington, D.C., may have already harmed the Trump administration in its legal battle over the deployment of troops on the streets of Los Angeles.
Monday marked the beginning of a three-day trial in which California is making the case that Hegseth and the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 federal law forbidding the use of the military for civilian law enforcement purposes—during its crackdown on L.A. protests against its immigration agenda.
During a Monday press conference on Trump’s federal takeover of D.C., Hegseth announced that the National Guard will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week” and that “there are other units we are prepared to bring in—other National Guard units, other specialized units.
“They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners,” Hegseth said. And “this is nothing new for DOD,” he added. “In Los Angeles, we did the same thing, working with the California National Guard, working with ICE officers.”
The comments apparently caught the ears of those hoping to prove that Hegseth unlawfully deployed troops in Los Angeles.
According to journalist Adam Klasfeld of the legal affairs publication All Rise, California’s attorney on Monday moved to enter Hegseth’s announcement of National Guard deployment—and, specifically, his comments about the troops “stand[ing] with their law enforcement partners” and having done “the same thing” in L.A.—into evidence.
Hegseth’s comments were ultimately admitted by the judge, Klasfeld reports, despite the Trump administration objecting on the grounds that they were not already on the exhibit list. The judge reportedly observed that the remarks could not have been included on the exhibit list previously, considering they just happened.
This is apparently the sort of mishap that occurs when one doesn’t wait for their potential military occupation of one city to play out in court before moving on to the next.
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