He can send D.C. Guard to D.C. POTUS controls it there.
“He can send D.C. Guard to D.C. POTUS controls it there.”
It would seem so, but not quite.
The president is actually third down the chain to activate the DC National Guard. The authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army.
The secretaries exercise this authority through the Commanding General of the DCNG, who is appointed by the president and fulfills the same role as the Adjutant General of a state National Guard organization.
The National Guard was delegated by the president, Harry Truman, to the defense secretary pursuant to Executive Order 10030, 26 January 1949 with authority to designate National Military Establishment officials to administer affairs of the D.C. And as a matter of practice, whenever the mayor “desires civil support from the DCNG,” she submits a request to the Commanding General, who notifies the Secretary of the Army.
The legal authority for this assistance is bifurcated. In the event of riots or other civil unrest in the District, D.C. Code § 49-103 allows the mayor to ask the president, whose authority as commander in chief of the DCNG has been delegated to the Secretary of the Army as described above, to deploy the DCNG to suppress the disturbance. But it has to be requested and then followed through by the Department of the Army. And that’s where the problem exists.
Under the Posse Comitatus Act, federal troops cannot be used for police actions unless it determined insurrection.
Mayor Muriel Bowser requested full deployment of the DCNG and it took anywhere from 30 minutes (as Department of Defense officials have claimed) to two hours to secure approval. The Department of Defense (DoD) asked the Capitol Police on January 3 whether they would need National Guard support as unrest grew, and the Capitol Police declined. This suggests that DoD was ready and willing to approve DCNG deployment. DoD officials, however, have stated that they were merely being cautious about military involvement in election-related activities.
So Trump did his job. He allowed the delegated personnel as assigned in the EO accomplished in 1949, and the reaffirming one in 1969, to be utilized in this position. I have mentioned before, sometimes it appears directives may seem to get in the way. But you don’t break them, you get them changed. Breaking them can be criminal offense. And the people who disagree with them many times do not understand the reason they were written the way they are. Nothing is obvious. Except people don’t know everything they read when it is to attack Trump. Words, or history, can get changed or blurred.
wy69