CNN Legal Analyst Says ‘We Are Really in Unknown Territory’ After California Sues Trump Over National Guard Deployment
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles and California’s lawsuit in response are entering “unknown territory.”
President Donald Trump has federalized 4,000 National Guardsmen and deployed up to 700 Marines to the Los Angeles area, which has been the site of protests against immigration raids. The latest protests began on Friday, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the city’s garment district as they sought to apprehend undocumented immigrants working there.
California Governor Gavin Newsom vehemently opposes the move, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the Trump administration to stop the deployments. It is the first time a president has federalized a state’s National Guard since 1965, when Lyndon Johnson invoked the Insurrection Act to protect Civil Rights activists in Alabama as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.
On Monday’s AC360 on CNN, Honig noted that the Trump administration did not invoke the Insurrection Act, instead opting to cite 10 U.S. Code § 12406, which pertains to the “National Guard in Federal service.”
“The law that the Trump administration is using to deploy the National Guard says this,” he began. “It says the president has the power to deploy the National Guard to a state in any of three circumstances. First of all, if there’s an invasion or a danger of invasion. That’s not in play here. Second of all, if there’s a rebellion or danger of rebellion. Trump did cite that in his order. And then third, a sort of catch-all, if the president is unable, with regular forces, to execute the laws of the United States. Trump cited that as well.”
The former federal prosecutor went on to say that Bonta’s lawsuit homes in on language in the law Trump invoked, which states that federalizing the National Guard “shall be issued through the governors of the States.”
“The catch – and this is what California, in their lawsuit, really seizes on – there’s language at the end that says orders for these purposes, deploying the National Guard shall be issued through the governors of the State,” he continued. “So, the main argument California makes in this lawsuit is, ‘Well, this was not issued through the governor, through Gavin Newsom. This was Donald Trump directly to the National Guard.’ Now, I can tell you what the response is gonna be. We haven’t seen it yet, but the Trump administration’s gonna say, ‘That’s just a technicality. It’s really the president’s call.'”
Honig went on to say the legal outcome is very much in doubt.
“The answer is, we don’t know, because this particular statute has only ever been invoked one prior time in American history,” he continued. “There had been other instances of the Insurrection Act. That’s not what we’re talking about here. This specific law was only invoked once. It was in 1970, and it involved the postal workers’ strike where Richard Nixon deputized the National Guard to deliver the mail. So, a very different scenario. That one didn’t even go to the courts. So, we are really in unknown territory here.”
Watch above via CNN.
