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DC Lawmakers Were Briefed That Trump Might Go To Extremes

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  Concerned the president might invoke the Insurrection Act to commandeer the city police, DC council members never expected an assault on the Capitol itself. Members of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia stand before the US Capitol a day after a pro- Trump mob broke into the building. Even as elected officials in the District of Columbia warned residents to stay home and avoid potentially violent skirmishes with pro-Trump protesters early last week, behind the scenes they were increasingly focused on what, at the time, they considered a far bigger threat: the president himself. In a closed briefing to the 13-member City Council last Monday, the DC Attorney General’s office shared a two-page memo analyzing the risk that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to seize control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department, according to three members in attendance. The 214-year-old law authorizes the president to deploy any of the country’s state or federal a