President Donald Trump on Monday invoked a never-before-used authority to seize control of the Washington, D.C. police department and hand it over to one of his own appointees as he simultaneously ordered the city’s national guard to begin patrolling the streets, casting the unprecedented move as needed to “rescue” the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
Flanked by a group of cabinet and law enforcement officials as he stood before reporters in the White House briefing room, Trump declared the day “Liberation Day in DC” as he said he was invoking a section of the decades-old home rule charter for Washington that allows the president to demand the services of the Metropolitan Police Department to deal with “special conditions of an emergency.”
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump said as he compared the situation in Washington to the country’s southern border.
More follows…
