Trump’s Washington, DC, crackdown is a political stunt. But it could take a much darker turn
In his first term, President Donald Trump spun alternative realities. In his second, he’s making everyone live in them.
Trump conjured his most dystopian vision yet of a crime-ridden American inner city to justify his emergency federal takeover of Washington, DC’s police department and to order National Guard troops onto the streets.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said in a macho news conference in the White House Briefing Room on Monday.
Everyone inside the Beltway would like to feel safer, and the capital has law-and-order challenges like many other major cities. But Trump’s hellish depiction contradicted data showing carjackings, gun crimes and homicides are all down over the past two years, with DC Mayor Muriel Bowser claiming violent crime is at 30-year lows.
The gap between Trump’s sulfurous rhetoric and day-to-day life in most of Washington undercut his dubious claims of a crisis. The president has made a habit of using the capital as a stage for his military flexing.
Emergencies are also in the eye of the beholder.
“When we think of emergencies, it usually involves surges in crime, or crime that is not being responsive, or tools that we have that we cannot use in the normal course — that’s when we use an emergency,” Bowser said.
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Trump’s pseudo-emergency in the nation’s capital is far from his first. This year, he’s declared national emergencies on the economy, energy and the border to unlock extraordinary executive branch powers.
But there is no economic emergency: Trade deficits existed for decades, and the US recovered from the pandemic better than other developed nations. This hardly represent the sudden crisis he’s used to seize tariff power away from Congress.
America doesn’t face an energy emergency, either — but Trump’s invocation unleashed new drilling and prospecting rules. Meanwhile, the president justifies hardline deportation policies by claiming America is under an invasion of criminals and terrorists — a hair-raising exaggeration, even if border enforcement was lax for parts of the Biden administration.
Chilling historical echoes
Trump’s Washington, DC, crackdown sits well within another trend of an increasingly authoritarian second term — his desire to militarize civilian functions of the government and law enforcement. He sent thousands of active-duty troops to the southern border. He deployed National Guard troops and US Marines to Los Angeles after unrest over immigration raids.
Using the military in policing roles is a device familiar from totalitarian states, where the first act of a dictator is usually to send troops onto the streets of the capital. Members of the National Capital Region congressional delegation, all Democrats, warned Monday of “a soft launch of authoritarianism” after Trump’s announcement.
Trump’s call for extreme solutions that only a strongman like him can provide is the kind of extremism that worried the Founders more than 250 years ago. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 1, for instance, that history showed leaders who overthrew liberty did so by “commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
Trump claimed in his first convention address in 2016 that “I alone can fix it.” And while he often evoked questionable crises in his first term, and used a so-called national emergency to fund his border wall, the president’s zeal for action is far more developed in his second. The last seven months have seen Trump repeatedly mining for untapped seams of presidential power and then wielding it in Washington, across the country and around the world.
Bowser adopted a strategically calm response to Trump’s assumption of power over her city — which was largely compliant, at least if it remains temporary, with the capital’s home rule ordinances. She acknowledged, however, that his power play was “unsettling and unprecedented.”
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It’s rather more than that, when taken alongside Trump’s earlier power grabs. In just the last week or two, these include the use of the Justice Department to go after Obama administration officials; an attempt to create five new GOP House seats in a mid-cycle Texas redistricting effort; the firing of a top government statistician because he didn’t like unemployment figures; and the use of massive tariffs to punish Brazil over its prosecution of his populist friend former President Jair Bolsonaro, who allegedly tried to overthrow the country’s 2022 election. In an earlier age, America punished those who threatened democracy, not the ones who held them accountable.
But as always with Trump, it’s worth sifting the sizzle from the substance.
Hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does — don’t really help voters understand what is going on. America is still far from being a police state such as China. Still, the president’s remark that it was “embarrassing” that he had to talk about the “unsafe” and “dirty” and “disgusting” US capital before seeing Vladimir Putin on Friday was jarring. His implication was that there would be no issue if he had dictatorial powers like the Russian president.
But sometimes Trump’s announcements have more bite than his actions. And it’s not impossible that his press conference on Monday was just a massive public relations stunt.
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His comment that police officers are now “allowed to do whatever the hell they want” were catnip for his MAGA base and are likely to fuel days of approving coverage on conservative media. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been heavily criticized in six months heading the Pentagon, but the former Fox News anchor was picked to fire off ballistic soundbites. He stood at Trump’s right shoulder and vowed that the troops sent to Washington would be “strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.”
To Trump’s left, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI chief Kash Patel stood together, encapsulating another obvious goal of Trump’s announcement: distracting from a MAGA media meltdown over their failure to release files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein they hyped on the campaign trail but have since kept hidden, fueling claims they’ve been co-opted by a corrupt deep state.
Barring altercations between federal agents and troops and suspects in Washington, DC, the deployments could also replicate the experience of Los Angeles, when the federalized military units were dispatched to a torrent of Trump’s firebrand rhetoric but quietly withdrawn a few weeks later.
Polls show many Americans are skeptical about the use of troops on American soil — especially to quell protests.
But Trump’s gambit wouldn’t be possible if the capital was totally peaceful. Heart-rending stories about shooting victims are horribly familiar in the Metro pages of the Washington Post and on local news. Residents of some of the district’s most troubled neighborhoods might view boots on the ground positively. And DC Police Union Chairman Greggory Pemberton told Fox News that his members agree with Trump that crime is out of control in the city and that “something needs to be done.”
Trump’s gamble is also a neat political trick. Democrats who oppose it can be lambasted as weak on crime. Critics might cite statistics showing drops in crime. But Trump understands this is an emotive rather than an intellectual issue that can be politically curated with bloodcurdling rhetoric.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whom Trump defied by deploying National Guard troops and Marines to the city, warned that in a democratic society, law enforcement problems should never need military solutions.
“I believed then, as I believe now, that Los Angeles was a test case. I think DC is a test case as well,” Bass told CNN’s Kasie Hunt, warning that Trump’s move in the capital could be a precursor for illegal power grabs to come.
“The president (can) say, ‘Well we can take over your city whenever we want and I am the commander in chief and I can use the troops whenever we want.’ I think that is an abuse of our troops, and I think it is an overreach of presidential powers.”
‘Red meat to throw to his base’: DC residents on Trump’s police takeover
On the streets of Washington, people were concerned by the president’s plans – but others said it would improve safety
As Donald Trump convened reporters at the White House on Monday morning to announce his plans for sending the national guard on to Washington DC streets and taking over the police department, protesters gathered a block away to denounce what they saw as his plans to put the federal district under his thumb.
“Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety,” Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a group advocating for the city’s autonomy, told the 200 or so people gathered on a block of 16th Street Northwest that had once been called Black Lives Matter Plaza, before the city government ordered the name stripped shortly after Trump’s inauguration this year.
“What we know from history is that authoritarians always want to control the capital and the people in the capital city. It’s because it’s the fastest way to silence dissent and to accelerate their agenda. And I want to be clear, this is not about crime. This is about what Trump is trying to do to DC in order to take over DC and silence us.”
Lamont Mitchell was not so sure. A lifelong Washingtonian who resides among the poorer and more crime-stricken neighborhoods east of the Anacostia river, he regarded Trump’s plans for the homeless as “inhumane”, but was open to his ideas for making the city’s streets safer. Mitchell described how he avoids certain areas on his drive home for fear of being struck by a stray bullet, no longer walks down certain blocks, had his RV stolen and plans to buy a gun.
“As a senior in Washington, I need to feel safe,” said 69-year-old Mitchell, who chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council community organization. “We gotta take drastic action when drastic action is called for.”
The overwhelmingly Democratic federal district is the latest American city to which Trump has deployed troops since taking office, after sending active-duty marines and national guard into Los Angeles in June to quell protests over immigration enforcement. This time, the foe is crime that the president argues is “out of control”, and the catalyst is the attack of a staffer from the “department of government efficiency” in a relatively safe neighborhood earlier this month.
Mayor Muriel Bowser has called Trump’s intervention “unsettling and unprecedented”, as well as unwarranted. City leaders have pointed to statistics that show crimes such as robbery, homicide and assault with a deadly weapon are down, and violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024.
Yet Washington continues to struggle with rates of violent crime that are higher than cities with similar populations, according to the Real-Time Crime Index from AH Datalytics. Residents are used to hearing reports of violence, though much of it occurs in the city’s poorer, majority Black eastern third, far from the museums and monuments of the National Mall.
They are also used to seeing a lot of police – about 50 law enforcement agencies are already in Washington DC, ranging from the citywide Metropolitan police department (MPD) to the obscure zoo police, FBI police and Federal Reserve police, which provide security around specific agencies.
National guard troops and agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) are now expected to be on the streets along those officers, but residents are unsure whether they will make much difference.
“I tend to be pretty cynical about what the Trump administration is doing right now. This seems pretty clearly just like red meat to throw to his base, this announcement on a Monday,” said Brian Strege, a neighborhood commissioner in Navy Yard, where groups of young people have appeared repeatedly over the summer, shooting off fireworks and harassing bystanders.
“I get the sense it’s just going to be a lot of bored national guard troops wandering around the city.”
Trump made mention of the disturbances in Navy Yard during his White House press conference, but Strege said the city had already taken steps to stop the disorder, including by instituting a night-time curfew this summer for people under 18. Trump plans to take over the police department for 30 days – right around the time schools resume, and Strege said the teenagers typically stop showing up.
“Thirty days from now is going to be September. Our juvenile crime is likely to decrease, because it always does. So, it sounds like they’re going to pretend that it went down because they did this big deployment,” he said. “I don’t see it helping really at all. I think our police force has actually been doing a pretty good job over the past few years.”
Last Saturday night saw more teenagers flood Navy Yard, as well as a shooting. The following day, Edward Daniels, another neighborhood commissioner in the area, saw Ice agents patrolling the street, and at one point stopping some teenagers from riding bikes, which others had used in the past to harass people.
Their presence, he said, didn’t make him feel safe, but rather concerned – did these agents know how to patrol a city? Were they coordinating with the police department?
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“It’s going to make things even more chaotic here and cause what I believe to be even more dangerous situations than what we’ve seen here on the ground,” he said.
Across the Anacostia river, Sandra Seegars, a longtime anti-crime activist, welcomed Trump’s announcement. Her Congress Heights neighborhood has one of the highest homicide rates in the city, according to police data, and she was pleased to hear from a friend that federal agents had been spotted in a nearby park.
“He’s going to make me feel safer,” Seegars said of Trump’s deployment. “I think he’s doing the right thing. He should have done it before now.”
Trump announces federal takeover of DC police and mobilization of National Guard
Trump zeroes in on federal takeover of DC as FBI patrols streets
President Donald Trump is ramping up efforts to curb crime in the nation’s capital on Monday as he threatens a federal takeover of Washington, DC, with plans for FBI agents to patrol the streets all while city officials largely remain deferential to him.
The event comes after Trump launched a surge of federal law enforcement in DC over the weekend that up to 450 officers were expected participate in, according to a White House official.
Additionally, Trump is expected to announce the activation of hundreds of DC National Guard troops on Monday morning as part of his effort to address crime in the capital, two US officials told CNN. One of those officials said up to roughly 800 troops are expected to be activated.
Plans called for as many as 130 FBI agents to patrol with DC police as part of the increased federal presence, according to a one person familiar with the plans, which were first reported by The Washington Post. A primary part of their job will be driving around the city, running license plates for stolen vehicles and warrants, a source familiar told CNN. It’s not typical for FBI agents to patrol with local police.
Trump said over the weekend that he will hold a “press conference” at 10 a.m. ET on Monday, teasing that the event “will, essentially, stop violent crime in Washington, D.C.”
“I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump said in social media post on Sunday. “The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”
To support his threats, Trump has made false claims about rising crime in DC. But so far this year, overall crime numbers are lower than last year’s, according to a preliminary year-to-date crime comparison from DC’s Metropolitan Police Department — following a similar trend of declining crime rates in major US cities.
Meanwhile, the local government has largely stayed deferential to the president amid his threats, avoiding the wrath of Trump, who was often at odds with the city during his first term.
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DC mayor deferential to Trump
Five days after Trump began threatening to “take over” the city, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser broke the notable silence that has been a feature of the city’s response to Trump’s incursions into local matters.
Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday morning, Bowser denied that DC is undergoing a massive spike in crime. She also pointed out that the DC National Guard is “the president’s National Guard” and highlighted her “shared priorities” with Trump, who she said is “interested in being in neighborhoods and fighting crime.”
The Democratic mayor, who abstained from criticizing the president directly during the interview, thanked federal law enforcement agencies “who always work cooperatively with us, and we expect that they will again.”
CNN attempted to reach Bowser’s office on Sunday and several times last week for comment but either didn’t receive a response or the office declined to comment.
Similarly, 12 of 13 members of the DC Council did not respond or declined to a request for comment last week. Councilmember Christina Henderson attributed crime in the city to the Trump and Biden administrations not nominating enough judges to handle the local caseload.
This deferential tone has been a hallmark of Bowser’s strategy for dealing with Trump in his second term. It’s also a sharp contrast to DC’s demonstrative resistance during Trump’s first term – like when Bowser ordered “Black Lives Matter” painted on a street in front of the White House during the height of the George Floyd protests.
When it comes to addressing violent crime in the city, Bowser — while maintaining that efforts to bring rates down has been successful — sees little upside in creating rifts with agencies by opposing Trump’s deployment of federal officers, a source familiar with her thinking told CNN.
Federal agencies work with DC’s police force on a consistent basis, as jurisdictions regularly overlap with the US Park Police, Federal Protective Service, Secret Service and others including the Capitol Police. The mayor’s office and the city-run police department also work intimately with federal partners in planning and securing a significant number of large events in the district.
Balancing those relationships while also softly pushing back on Trump’s repeated claims that DC is infested with crime is Bowser’s current strategy to handling the volatile president, whose obsession with DC crime has ebbed and flowed over the years.
And Bowser has received some credit from federal officials, including US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro, who said Wednesday in a Fox News interview: “I have to give the mayor credit. Mayor Bowser is working with us.”
The mayor in March announced the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza after Republicans in Congress threatened to withhold funding for the district if it kept the two-block mural, which was unveiled following the 2020 murder of Floyd and subsequent protests.
The mayor told CNN at the time, “We have bigger fish to fry,” citing the looming financial and existential crises her city faces under Trump amid federal job losses and funding cuts .
Bowser has taken opportunities to work with Trump when she can, including joining the president in the White House earlier this year to announce the NFL Draft would come to DC in 2027. She has also welcomed the federal government’s help repairing and beautifying federal parks in DC.
What can happen next?
In his second term, Trump first suggested a federal takeover of the city in February, saying it should be run with “law and order.”
He renewed his focus on crime in DC last week after Edward Coristine, a former Department of Government Efficiency employee, was assaulted in an attempted carjacking.
After that incident, Trump told reporters he was considering having his administration take over the Metropolitan Police Department and bringing in the National Guard. The president also said the administration was going “to look at” overturning DC Home Rule – which gives certain congressional powers regarding the governance of the district to local government entities, including the mayor and city council.
“We have to run DC. This has to be the best-run place in the country, not the worst-run place in the country,” Trump said Wednesday.
The Trump administration can take over the DC police department, which the president has said he’s considering, and deploying the National Guard.
Under DC Home Rule, the president can take control of the city’s police for 48 hours if he “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require the use of the Metropolitan Police force for Federal purposes.”
He would then have access to any services of the police department that he “may deem necessary and appropriate.”
Trump can retain control for a longer period if he notifies the chairs and ranking members of the congressional committees that handle legislative matters related to Washington, DC, including the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Any request of over 30 days must be passed into law.
But for Trump to truly have the federal government take over governing of Washington, he would need Congress to pass legislation, something which would be unlikely in a tightly controlled Senate.
The story and headline have been updated with additional details.
Trump has federalized DC’s police force. Now what?
The Metropolitan Police along with federal agencies tasked with helping curb crime in the nation’s capital are scrambling to figure out roles and strategy following President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a crime emergency and federalize DC’s police force, multiple sources told CNN.
“We’re going to restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “It’s going to be something very special.”
But little communication seems to have been done before Trump’s news conference – the Washington, DC, mayor and police chief hadn’t been told about the takeover until they watched Trump say it live. It’s led to confusion over who now leads the MPD, how their policing strategy will change and in what ways federal agents – many who aren’t trained for community policing – are going to interact with local officers.
During a separate news conference, Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was trying to set up a meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump said would be overseeing the implementation of his order. She also maintained that Chief of Police Pamela Smith would still run the department and report to Bowser up through the deputy mayor.
“Nothing about our organizational chart has changed,” Bowser said. “And nothing in the executive order would indicate otherwise.”
The Home Rule Act of 1973 allows the president to take control of the city’s police for 48 hours if he “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist,” which requires the department’s use for federal purposes. The president can retain control of the department for a longer period if he notifies the chairs and ranking members of the congressional committees that handle legislative matters pertaining to DC, which Trump indicated he intends to do. Any request of control over the city’s police department for more than 30 days must be passed into law.
This is the first time a president has used Section 740 of the Home Rule Act to federalize the DC metro police, said Dr. Heidi Bonner, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at East Carolina University.
“It’s definitely difficult to say what that means,” she said, including it being “an open question” as to who’s in charge.
“Is the chief of police still in charge of the department once it’s become federalized?” Bonner asked. “And of course, all this is mixed up in the unique nature of DC as a district and not a state. There are different authorities – the president acts as the governor for all intents and purposes when it comes from the National Guard.”
When asked about the confusion over how MPD will now be run, the Justice Department highlighted portions of Trump’s order that state, “the Mayor shall provide such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the Attorney General may deem necessary and appropriate.”
It remains unclear, however, how such an arrangement will play out practically.
The order also says the attorney general will also update Trump if further action might be required from the president.
Bowser seemed resigned to the fact that Trump’s decision would go into effect given the city’s status. Prominent Democrats called Bowser and her office Monday to offer support but indicated there was little they could do to stop the takeover.
“I don’t want to minimize what was said and I don’t want to minimize the intrusion on our autonomy,” Bowser said. The mayor also called the move “unsettling and unprecedented” and advocated for DC statehood to prevent such unilateral action from the president.
Police Chief Smith said she was scheduled to meet with federal liaisons following the news conference for the first time regarding Trump’s announcement in order to start to “create an operational plan.”
DC National Guard and FBI agents on the ground
Trump activated 800 soldiers from the DC National Guard, with up to 200 members being assigned to supporting law enforcement, according to the Defense Department.
“Duties for those personnel include administrative and logistical roles, as well as providing a physical presence in support of law enforcement,” the DOD said.
The unilateral move contrasts heavily with how Trump blamed others, including Bowser and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not deploying the National Guard on January 6, 2021, before Trump-supporters broke into the US Capitol.
Over the weekend, Trump had already moved officers from several federal agencies to begin assisting MPD in policing certain areas in DC, including as many as 130 FBI agents to patrol with DC police as part of the increased federal presence, according to two people familiar with the deployment.
It’s not typical for FBI agents to patrol with local police, and agents are often not trained for community policing and operate under different policies – including for use of deadly force – that could create issues on the ground, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. Because of this, pairing federal agents with officers to patrol DC could present a situation where each member of the team must respond differently to a potential threat based on the respective agency’s policy.
In the FBI, the plan to deploy agents to patrol the streets of Washington has been met with concern over strained resources and the safety of agents who are not trained in routine police patrols, according to multiple sources.
Taking agents away from their daily investigations to patrol DC would risk not adequately addressing other serious crimes like terrorism, foreign counterintelligence threats, cyber intrusions and the nation’s fentanyl epidemic, sources said.
“This isn’t hard: If we’re doing (policing) we’re not covering down on those other threats,” said one source.
Federal agents are also typically only minimally trained in conducting vehicle stops, which remains one of the most dangerous aspects of a police officer’s job. Unlike routine police encounters with suspects, which may only involve one or two officers, when agencies like the FBI conduct an arrest, they typically plan out the operation methodically in advance and execute it with a complement of agents that far outnumbers the suspect.
During the two sparring news conferences Monday, Trump remained adamant that crime in Washington is out of control despite data suggesting that it has decreased in recent years, and Bowser said firmly that DC is “not experiencing a spike in crime but a decrease in crime.”
Regardless of the current crime rates, Bonner noted that Trump’s order has a 30-day limit and said any long-term impact on crime is doubtful.
“You can’t have a long-term effect on crime with fast actions like this because it doesn’t get to the root causes,” Bonner said. “At the end of 30 days, it will be interesting to see what it has done in terms of reducing the crime rate further, or whatever the goals of this operation are, and what they might try to do moving forward to affect some long term fixes.”
“Because, again, you’re not going to affect crime in the long term without addressing the symptoms of crimes,” Bonner said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Here’s what could happen if Trump brings the National Guard to DC
President Donald Trump this week reignited his threat that the federal government will take over and “run” Washington, DC, after a former Department of Government Efficiency employee was assaulted in an attempted carjacking.
Trump said Wednesday he is considering having his administration take over the DC Police Department and might deploy the National Guard to DC over recent crime.
After those comments, the White House announced the federal law enforcement presence in the city is increasing starting Thursday night. The effort, a White House official said, will include US Capitol Police, FBI, US Marshals Service, DC Police, DEA and other agencies.
DC National Guard spokesperson Master Sgt. Arthur Wright told CNN on Friday morning the branch had not been activated, adding that any “presence of National Guardsmen and vehicles seen this week and throughout the weekend are related to required training for UTA (Unit Training Assembly).”
Still, experts say Trump can’t unilaterally federalize DC, and that calling federal troops into the city would be unusual, especially since the district does not appear to be suffering from a significant crime spike.
DC’s Home Rule
The US Congress has authority and oversight over DC. But it ceded some of that power when it passed the Home Rule in 1973, giving some of its ability to govern the city to local government entities, including the mayor and city council.
Trump said this week he was going “to look at” overturning Home Rule, saying, “the lawyers are already studying it.”
But such an act would require a vote by Congress, said Jill Hasday, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
“To fully remove local control over DC, Congress would have to repeal the Home Rule Act. So, if what the president has in mind is complete federal control over DC, in other words, no possibilities and no room for local control, that would require repealing the Home Rule Act,” Hasday said.
How the National Guard could play a role
The DC National Guard’s 2,700 soldiers and airmen report only to the president, unlike their counterparts in other states.
Trump told reporters this week he’s considering “bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly, too.”
William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University, said Trump’s command of guard troops in the district makes it easier for them to participate in law enforcement “on behalf of the government,” which would typically require a governor’s request.
“By statute, the president is made the commander of the DC Guard. In every other place, every other state, it’s the governor. Here, it’s the president,” Banks said.
When Trump invoked a rarely used law to federalize the National Guard in response to protests in Los Angeles earlier this year, experts told CNN the troops could not make arrests unless Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.
Claire Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the National Guard should leave anything related to law enforcement to the police.
Banks said any national authorities in DC would “have the same limits on their authority that they would anywhere else.”
“They have to respect the constitutional rights of the people so they can’t intimidate, they can’t search and seize without a reasonable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing,” he said. “They can’t target individuals on the basis of their political beliefs or their political expression.”
What happened in 2020
The idea of federal troops patrolling DC could invoke for residents memories of 2020, when Trump called in a slew of federal authorities to respond to protests stemming from the police killing of George Floyd.
The city’s status as a district, not a state, allows the president, and in turn the federal government, more leeway in directing troops and a range of federal authorities.
The response to the protests included personnel from the National Guard, FBI and ICE, along with the Secret Service, Park Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, US Marshals Service, Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protective Service and the Transportation Security Administration.
The presence of federal authorities elicited criticism from DC officials and resulted in a stream of images of authorities dressed in full fatigues patrolling the streets of the city’s downtown.
Crime is down in DC
Hasday said another reason the move would be unprecedented is because it is “not clear that DC is, in fact, undergoing a public safety crisis,” Hasday said. Although there’s violent crime in DC, just as there is everywhere, Hasday said she hasn’t seen any outside sources claim the situation is beyond the capacity of local police.
Despite Trump’s repeated claims of increased crime in DC, 2025 crime numbers are lower than last year’s, according to a preliminary year-to-date crime comparison from DC Police.
Banks said bringing in outsiders would be “against the grain” of how Americans like for laws to be enforced.
“The background principle in the United States is that we like to have our laws enforced by civilians, by police, and we like it to be at the local level, people that are soldiers, cops, if you will, who are close to us. They’re our friends and neighbors. They live in our community,” he said.
Trump’s legal retribution tour is getting more blatant
In case there was any doubt that President Donald Trump and his administration are on a legal retribution tour, this should just about settle it.
Trump has often been under investigation during his political career — a fact owing to his near-constant efforts to push boundaries. But perhaps the four biggest examples? The Russia investigation; his Ukraine impeachment; January 6, 2021; and his personal legal troubles after leaving office (including those stemming from January 6).
Less than seven months into Trump’s second term, key people from every one of these efforts have now apparently faced investigations of their own.
More than 10 people who played key roles in these investigations or ran afoul of Trump have faced some kind of significant legal scrutiny. These are steps that go beyond Trump merely accusing them of misdeeds or suggesting they should be probed.
Trump and top administration officials have also targeted foes with firings and stripped them of security clearances, but the effort to apply legal scrutiny to some of the most prominent adversaries appears to be ratcheting up.
Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this week ordered a grand jury probe into allegations that key Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence in the Russia probe. On Friday came news that New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump, faces her own grand jury probe. Reports indicate a similar effort has also targeted Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who figured prominently in two Trump investigations from the president’s first term.
Often, the allegations being investigated do not relate to the figures’ actions in probing Trump. Many of allegations remain unsubstantiated in the public record, like those about the Russia intelligence.
None of which means none of the people did anything wrong. There is plenty we don’t know.
But it would seem telling that key figures from each of these efforts have found themselves under scrutiny. What are the odds that happens — and so quickly — if this isn’t about retaliation and sending a message?
And even if the investigations don’t amount to anything, there is value for Trump in creating legal headaches for these people. It certainly sends a message to anyone who might to investigate him in the future.
Here’s a look at what we know, broken down by who investigated Trump for what.
The Russia investigation
Barack Obama, et al.: Bondi, earlier this week, ordered prosecutors to begin a grand jury probe into allegations that top Obama administration officials manufactured intelligence about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The move followed the release of new documents from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that she and others have misconstrued and that don’t appear to shed much light beyond previous probes — including ones spearheaded by Republicans. Gabbard and Trump have gone so far as to suggest Obama himself committed treason.
Former FBI Director James Comey: We learned last month that the FBI was investigating Comey for possible false statements to Congress. Trump controversially fired Comey in 2017 amid the FBI director’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its possible ties to Trump’s campaign. The news of the investigation came after top Trump administration officials earlier this year strained to accuse Comey of calling for the president’s assassination.
Former CIA Director John Brennan: That FBI investigation also included Brennan, who played a key role in early assessments of Russia’s interference and whom Trump has regularly attacked.
January 6, 2021
Sen. Adam Schiff of California: The Justice Department is also probing Schiff, according to reports, for allegations of mortgage fraud. Those reports haven’t been confirmed by CNN, but Schiff’s lawyer Preet Bharara late Friday issued a statement calling the allegations “transparently false, stale, and long debunked.” Schiff managed Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 when he was serving in the House and later chaired the House January 6 committee’s investigation of Trump. The news comes weeks after Trump called Schiff “a THIEF” and said, “He should be prosecuted.” Trump also said in December that Schiff and other January 6 committee members should be jailed. The allegations stem from a confidential Fannie Mae memo raising questions about the possibility of “occupancy misrepresentation” by Schiff, according to The Washington Post.
Liz Cheney: Shortly after the 2024 election, Trump urged the FBI to investigate Schiff’s co-chair of the January 6 committee, former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican. In addition to saying January 6 committee members should be in jail, Trump promoted social media posts calling for Cheney to face a televised military tribunal. While there is no evidence of such an FBI investigation, House Republicans pressed forward with their own probe, focused on the idea that Cheney manipulated evidence in that investigation. That investigation has divided House Republicans, CNN reported in March.
The Ukraine impeachment
This category could also include Schiff, given he managed Trump’s first impeachment, which related to the president’s efforts to leverage Ukraine for political help in the 2020 election.
The Vindmans: Then-interim US Attorney Ed Martin earlier this year sent letters to Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia seeking information about a business Vindman and his brother, Alexander Vindman, founded to help arm Ukraine to fight Russia, according to The Washington Post. CNN has not reported on these letters. Before Eugene Vindman was elected to Congress, the Vindman brothers blew the whistle on Trump tying Ukraine aid to the country announcing an investigation into the Bidens, when Joe Biden was Trump’s campaign opponent. Trump has regularly attacked Alexander Vindman, whom former top administration official Elon Musk once called a “traitor.”
Trump’s personal legal cases
New York Attorney General Letitia James: James has faced investigations in multiple jurisdictions, including ones related to alleged mortgage fraud and her actions in investigating Trump. James successfully brought civil fraud charges against Trump in 2023, winning a verdict worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and brought multiple lawsuits against the first Trump administration. Trump has attacked James for years. Shortly before an investigation of James came to light in May, Trump called James “a total crook.”
Special counsel Jack Smith: The Office of Special Counsel, which is temporarily headed by a Trump appointee after the president fired its previous head, is investigating Smith for potential violations of the Hatch Act. (The Office of Special Counsel is separate from the kind of special counsel Smith served as.) That act limits political activities by government employees. Smith led the investigations and attempted federal prosecutions of Trump over January 6 and Trump’s decision to take classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Those cases resulted in indictments but did not go to trial after Trump was elected president. Trump has frequently attacked Smith in public, often calling him “deranged.” It’s not clear precisely what the probe is focused on, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas recently alleged Smith’s prosecutorial actions against Trump were geared toward influencing the 2024 election.
Other critics from his first term
Miles Taylor: Trump in April signed an executive action that, among other things, ordered the Justice Department to probe the former Department of Homeland Security official. Taylor in 2018 wrote an anonymous New York Times op-ed describing a “resistance” within the administration to Trump, and later wrote a book critical of Trump.
Christopher Krebs: The same executive action also ordered a probe of the former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director, who after the 2020 election undercut Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.
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