Officials in the US capital have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump for his ongoing "illegal" deployment of National Guard troops to the city.
Trump "has run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement," Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote in the lawsuit on Thursday.
The suit comes two days after a federal judge in the state of California ruled that Trump's deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests there was illegal.
District Court Judge Charles Breyer issued an injunction Tuesday blocking the military from being used for policing but did not require the troops to be withdrawn from California. He found that the president violated a long-standing law known as the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law generally bars the military from being used for civilian law enforcement.
Schwalb pointed specifically to that law in his suit, and said Trump's actions "flout the Posse Comitatus Act," as well as another law that prohibits the use of military forces to carry out policing absent extreme circumstances.
'Illegal federal overreach'
Trump deployed the military to Los Angeles in June, and mirrored that effort August 11 when he sent the National Guard to Washington, DC.
About 2,300 Guardsmen from seven states are currently deployed to the nation's capital, some of whom have been armed with assault rifles and other firearms.
The DC Attorney General's office said the deployment amounts "to an involuntary military occupation that far exceeds the President’s authority over the National Guard," and said most of the troops have been deputised by the US Marshals Service to carry out policing duties.
"No American city should have the US military – particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement – policing its streets," Schwalb said in a statement.
"It's DC today but could be any other city tomorrow. We've filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach," he added.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended Trump's deployment, saying he is "within his lawful authority to deploy the National Guard in Washington DC to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement with specific tasks.
"This lawsuit is nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of DC residents and visitors — to undermine the President's highly successful operations to stop violent crime in DC," Jackson added in a statement.
