SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
pam bondi
'We Are Fighting to Stop It': DC Attorney General Sues to Block Trump Takeover of City Police
"The administration is abusing its limited, temporary authority under the Home Rule Act, infringing on the district's right to self-governance," said the Washington, DC attorney general.
Aug 15, 2025
Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb on Friday filed a lawsuit to block United States Attorney General Pam Bondi from taking over the US capital city's police department.
The lawsuit accused the Trump administration of violating the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, a 1973 law that delegated certain powers over the city once held by the federal government to local government officials.
Schwalb argued in the lawsuit that the Home Rule Act gives the president of the United States a very limited set of powers over the governance of the city's police force, as it states that the president may commandeer the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) if he "determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist" that require the MPD to help fulfill "federal purposes."
Schwalb further noted that the timeframe for this authority is extremely limited. In all, the president can take command of MPD for just 48 hours unless he sends proper notice to the US Congress, after which he will have command over it for a maximum of 30 days.
"For the president to obtain MPD's services for longer than 30 days—even in the face of an ongoing emergency—Congress must pass a joint resolution permitting the extension," Schwalb argued.
The DC attorney general then poked holes in Trump's claims that a federal takeover of MPD was necessary due to a crime emergency.
"The president did not identify any new or unusual exigency that justified the invocation of [emergency powers]," Schwalb alleged. "Instead, he claimed that violent crime in the district is 'increasing,' when, in fact, it has fallen 26% since 2024. The president also did not limit the scope of his order to specific 'federal purposes,' instead directing the mayor to provide any services the attorney general deemed necessary to 'maintain law and order in the Nation's seat of Government.'"
Schwalb also claimed that the Trump administration flatly broke the law when it appointed Terrance Cole, the current administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to serve as MPD's "interim commissioner." He said that this action would greatly harm MPD's ability to enforce the law and maintain public safety.
"Imposing a new command structure 'effective immediately' will wreak operational havoc within MPD," he wrote. "The new command structure will create confusion for MPD personnel, who are required under district law to respect and obey the chief of police as the head and chief of the police force."
He emphasized that "this will also inevitably lead to delays and confusion as MPD personnel... are forced to run their directives by an 'Emergency Commissioner' who is unfamiliar with MPD procedures and the local communities MPD serves," before warning that "there is no greater risk to public safety in a large, professional police force like MPD than to not know who is in command."
Schwalb concluded his complaint by asking the court to vacate Bondi's order of the federal takeover of MPD, and also to permanently block DEA Administrator Cole from assuming "any position of command" within the department.
In a statement separate from the lawsuit itself, Schwalb charged that "the administration's unlawful actions are an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call DC home" and "this is the gravest threat to home rule that the district has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it."
"By declaring a hostile takeover of MPD," said Schwalb, "the administration is abusing its limited, temporary authority under the Home Rule Act, infringing on the district's right to self-governance and putting the safety of DC residents and visitors at risk."
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert praised Schwalb's lawsuit and said it was a necessary step "for standing up to this administration's wild and unprecedented abuse of power."
"Declaring a fake emergency and placing our capital city under what looks like a military occupation has furthered the dystopian reality of this moment," Gilbert emphasized. "Donald Trump is an authoritarian president who is intent on dismantling the core safeguards of power-sharing in our democracy, and his actions must be resisted by every American of conscience."
Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said that his organization "stands shoulder‑to‑shoulder" with the DC attorney general in opposing Trump's takeover.
"Appointing the DEA head as 'emergency police commissioner' with full command over MPD is brazen overreach, unprecedented, and directly counter to the principles of democratic accountability and local autonomy enshrined in law," Eisen added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Corporate Crime Pays' Under Trump as His Agencies Drop Enforcement Against 165 Companies
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said the author of a new Public Citizen report.
Aug 14, 2025
During the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump's administration has withdrawn or suspended enforcement actions against 165 companies in sectors across the U.S. economy, with Big Tech benefiting most from federal agencies' lax approach to corporate crime.
A report released Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that the Trump administration has halted or ended a third of misconduct investigations and enforcement actions targeting technology firms—including behemoths such as Meta, Tesla, and Google.
Both Meta and Google donated to Trump's inaugural fund, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent big in support of the president's 2024 White House bid. Public Citizen found that the tech corporations that have benefited from Trump administration decisions to drop enforcement efforts have spent a combined $1.2 billion trying to influence the president.
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the new report. "To Big Tech corporations, this sends the message there is little risk in breaking the law in pursuit of profit—especially if you are an ally of the administration."
"For insiders," Claypool added, "corporate crime pays."
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing."
Public Citizen's report comes amid growing scrutiny of what one critic recently described as "the incredible shrinking Trump antitrust enforcers."
Despite claims of a "surging MAGA antitrust movement," Trump's Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have repeatedly shown a willingness to bow to White House-connected lobbyists and allow corporate consolidation to proceed unabated. Last week, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump DOJ settled a Biden-era legal challenge against UnitedHealth Group, allowing the monopolist to swallow yet another competitor.
"The second Trump administration has now become a pay-to-play operation where influential MAGA lobbyists paid millions by large corporations use their clout with the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi to overrule the enforcers and push through mergers," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote following news of the UnitedHealth settlement.
"It seems that if you're a company and can pony up the money," Dayen added, "you can get whatever regulatory treatment you wish. Bribery has gone in a few short months from a prohibited activity to the coin of the realm in Trump's America."
As Public Citizen's report showed, tech giants have been the chief beneficiaries of what the group characterized as the Trump administration's corrupt approach to corporate crime enforcement.
At the start of Trump's second term, at least 104 tech corporations faced more than 140 federal investigations and enforcement actions. The Trump administration has withdrawn or halted nearly 50 of those enforcement actions, Public Citizen found.
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement. "For Big Tech, a relative pittance in political spending has generated gigantic returns in dropped prosecutions, policy U-turns, and aggressive administration support for Big Tech's global agenda."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Latest Chapter in the Ghislaine Maxwell Saga
Trump has tried desperately to walk away from the Epstein conspiracy theories that he had pushed to energize his MAGA base. But nothing has worked.
Aug 14, 2025
When we left convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, she had just received several remarkable gifts from the Trump administration.
First, while serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors as Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer, she got an unprecedented meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the second highest official in the Justice Department. Blanche was also U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the hush-money trial resulting in his 34 felony convictions. That such a meeting even occurred astonished legal observers across the political spectrum.
Second, only a week later, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell out of the Florida Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a minimum security prison with horrendous conditions. Her new home is the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas—a “Club Fed” that houses white-collar criminals and celebrities who have far better living quarters and relative freedom of movement.
The Plot Thickens
Now independent journalist and podcast host Allison Gill (“Mueller, She Wrote” on Bluesky) reports, “I have Ghislaine Maxwell’s security score, custody level, transfer code, public safety factor, and sex offender waiver.”
If accurate, Gill’s information confirms my earlier observation that sex offenders are not eligible for placement in a federal prison camp. Someone has to waive such a prisoner’s mandatory “public safety factor” that would otherwise bar a transfer to one.
Gill also notes, “What stands out here is the custody level ‘OUT,’ which allows her to leave the minimum security campus for work assignments.” [Italics in original]
Déjà Vu?
In some respects, Maxwell is following in the footsteps of her mentor. In June 2008, federal prosecutors in Florida had identified 31 victims whom it was prepared to name in an indictment of Jeffrey Epstein. President George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general had determined that federal prosecution of Epstein was appropriate.
But then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein’s high-powered lawyers. The federal charges were dropped. In return, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.
I predict that Trump will now blame the courts for his own lack of transparency.
Epstein served a 13-month sentence in a private wing of a Palm Beach jail. He was allowed to leave 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work out of a nearby office. After his release, he resumed sex trafficking in minors with Maxwell as his coconspirator. In 2019, Epstein was indicted on new federal charges.
Acosta had agreed to keep the non-prosecution agreement confidential. In 2019, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the victims’ rights by failing to notify them of the plea deal. By then, Acosta was secretary of labor in Trump’s first administration. After revelation of his role in the earlier Epstein plea deal, he fresigned.
Meanwhile, A Courageous Judge Exposed Trump’s Latest Ploy
Trump has tried desperately to walk away from the Epstein conspiracy theories that he had pushed to energize his MAGA base. But nothing has worked. As the MAGA core cracked, pressure mounted and he made a hollow pledge: Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the courts’ permission to release grand jury materials relating to Epstein and Maxwell.
As I observed previously, that was a head fake toward transparency because: 1) grand jury materials are a tiny slice of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein; and 2) the courts could refuse to release anything at all.
And the courts have done just that. So far, Bondi is now 0-for-2 in her effort to obtain judicial release of the Epstein-Maxwell grand jury materials.
Bondi’s latest rebuke came on August 11 in New York. In a blistering opinion, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer called out Trump’s subterfuge. The court observed that the “special circumstances” required for releasing Maxwell’s grand jury materials are not present:
The Government’s invocation of special circumstances, however, fails at the threshold. Its entire premise—that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them—is demonstrably false.
The court continued:
A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the Government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new.
Turning the government’s words back on it, the judge ruled:
A “public official,” “lawmaker,” “pundit,” or “ordinary citizen” “deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter,” Motion to Unseal at 3, and who reviewed these materials expecting, based on the Government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled. There is no “there” there.
Judge Engelmayer’s most insightful and telling passage was also his most direct:
The one colorable argument under that doctrine for unsealing in this case, in fact, is that doing so would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal. A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at “transparency” but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.
Judge Engelmayer’s powerful condemnation is remarkable. He blasted Bondi’s attempt to use the court as a vehicle for Trump’s deflection, distraction, and diversion playbook.
Another federal judge in New York is considering the Justice Department’s request to release Epstein’s grand jury materials. I predict that Bondi goes 0-for-3.
I predict that Trump will now blame the courts for his own lack of transparency.
And I predict that the Ghislaine Maxwell scandal will live on….
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular