'10th amendment says power to enforce local law enforcement shall reside exclusively in the states'

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00:00Joining me now from Washington is legal analyst and former U.S. prosecutor Eric Lisanne.

00:05Eric, thank you so much again for your time.

00:07These are unprecedented moves by an American president.

00:11So does Donald Trump have an actual legal basis for this?

00:17Thank you for having me.

00:19Apparently, Donald Trump has no basis in reality,

00:24but that may be a separate question for whether a court gives him so-called legal permission to act.

00:31And namely, the problem is through the Supreme Court,

00:34which has been extremely deferential in a series of decisions that they have been engaging in

00:40filters downward in the American legal system because of its authority onto the lower courts

00:45and the trial courts that look at this.

00:47But there has to be some statutory authority that is consistent with the Constitution that is invoked.

00:53For example, in California, when Trump did this a couple months ago,

00:58he invoked almost never used before legal authority to do it.

01:03And it was a very close call as to whether a court would approve that.

01:07The initial court did not.

01:09But later on appeal, the appellate court gave him permission to go forward at least temporarily.

01:15And then there was a further trial that hasn't been resolved yet,

01:19that they took evidence in a couple weeks ago.

01:21So we don't have a conclusive answer to that.

01:23But he has less authority here than he does in Washington, D.C.,

01:28because Washington, D.C. is not a state.

01:30These other cities, whether it be Baltimore or Chicago,

01:33are obviously in states, Maryland and Illinois, respectively.

01:37Neither the governors nor the mayors of those states want National Guards there.

01:42They are not allowing the National Guards to be federalized,

01:45at least under their authority.

01:47And the Constitution does say that normally the police powers reside strictly with the states.

01:53So we have here a clash of the federal authority,

01:58which exists to a certain extent in the Constitution,

02:01but the specific state authority, which is placed with the police power.

02:06So we're really in unprecedented territory.

02:09You've got the House Minority Leader and the NYC Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries

02:14accusing Donald Trump of manufacturing a crisis in Chicago in order to justify sending in the National Guard.

02:21But in which circumstances does the U.S. Constitution give the federal government authority over the National Guard?

02:27There is nothing specifically in the Constitution that gives the president the ability to deploy the National Guards

02:38against the wishes of the states.

02:41It happened in circumstances before very rarely where the states were a part of the effort.

02:48This is what's unprecedented here.

02:50The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says the police power, the power to enforce local law enforcement,

02:58shall reside exclusively in the states.

03:01The conflict is if the president is fighting a national emergency or a foreign invasion,

03:09then the Constitution does give him authority.

03:13And that's sort of the language that the president is using.

03:16He's trying to liken this to an invasion.

03:18But, look, that's not fooling anybody.

03:21The people in these cities and the leadership in these cities and in the states where the cities are located

03:27are saying that's simply not happening.

03:30Nothing like this is happening.

03:32So this is where the conflict arises.

03:35But it may ultimately be that if a court says, look, and it will be ultimately the Supreme Court,

03:42says he can declare a national invasion or some sort of national emergency and a total falling apart of any other fabric of national security

03:52without doing this, that legally then lower courts would have to follow along and give permission.

04:00But at that point, it's so far away from reality that it wouldn't have any credibility.

04:05Nobody would accept such a farce.

04:09And this is the situation that we really risk running into.

04:13Such moves do not bode well for the country as a whole, do they, Eric?

04:18No, if they're pushed to an extreme, and we know Donald Trump is nothing if not an extremist in his views

04:26when he's unchecked, if pushed to an extreme, this could lead to a civil war.

04:32This is like colonial rule.

04:34The people that are actually impacted by this, the local leadership, the local authorities,

04:40the local government, do not want this, and Trump is forcing it upon them against their will

04:47and on the flimsiest of legal pretexts and on zero factual pretexts.

04:52Eric Lassam from Washington, thank you again.

04:57My pleasure.

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