On Monday’s CNN “News Central,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe warned that President Donald Trump’s move to place federal authorities in charge of Washington, D.C.’s police could have “major impacts on the safety and security of this country.”
“There’s a lot that worries me about this,” McCabe said. “First of all, it’s hard to explain the lack of pushback from D.C. authorities right now. I would suspect they’re trying to process the situation—it’s absolutely bizarre.”
McCabe stressed that assigning hundreds of FBI agents to patrol D.C. streets is highly problematic. “This is not something FBI agents are trained for. They don’t have the legal authority for it, and it’s unclear how they would make arrests outside federal property. None of this has been worked out.”
He also highlighted the potential consequences for ongoing investigations: “All those counterterrorism, counterintelligence, criminal, and child protection cases—the work we rely on FBI agents to do every day—is at risk. Diverting resources to patrol D.C., something the FBI isn’t designed to do, raises serious safety concerns for both the agents and the citizens of the District.”
“Overall, these decisions are questionable and could have major impacts on national safety,” McCabe concluded.
