Police presence in Hyattsville; Court hears arguments over Natl. Guard in DC

Welcome into the DMV zone. Let's get caught up on all things that are happening here in the Fox 5 newsroom. I'm Marina Morocco and we start off tonight with some breaking news out of Hyattsville where Sky Fox is flying over the scene right now. This is just behind what appears to be a shopping center there, a Family Dollar in Hyattsville on Riggs Road. As you can see, police have a tent that is surrounding this red vehicle there and they are photographing the scene here at this hour we are being told the police are on this scene zeroing in on that car unclear what exactly they are looking for again this Family Dollar in Hyattsville on Riggs Road as soon as we get more information from police we will of course pass that along to you right here on Fox 5 in the meantime the legal fight over President Trump's deployment of the National Guard in the District back in court today a federal appeals court now weighing whether the president had the authority to send troops into the nation's capital it's a move that DC officials argue was illegal. The United States military should not be policing the streets of American cities anywhere in America and certainly not here in the District of Columbia. The deployment of the National Guard when it happened last summer was illegal and it remains illegal today. It's a fundamental violation of one of our core principles in American democracy that we do not have military doing the policing of local communities. The ruling could have major implications for presidential power and the city's ability to control its own law enforcement we've got a board of advisors distinguished professor at Syracuse University College of law William C. Banks are joining us here uh professor banks let's break down what the court is hearing today and what this means is this appointment now is running more than a year and until now no court has said that this is illegal at least not definitively that's right at the same time again no court has definitively ruled that it's lawful There's simply been hearings and tentative decisions and delays. But the question is a is a really important one, certainly for the residents of the district. As you all know, the district is not a state. And by statute enacted by Congress in the 19th century, the National Guard in D.C. is subject to the command of the President of the United States. If it were a state, it would be the governor in charge. It's not the mayor in D.C., it's the president who's commander of the Guard So he certainly has the authority to deploy the Guard in D.C., but as the D.C. Council just argued very well on the steps there, not to enforce the law, but to respond to crises or emergencies of various kinds. Deploying National Guard, either D.C. Guard or Guard from other states to engage in civilian law enforcement in D.C. is not permitted by U.S. law. There's a longstanding principle that we've held close to our hearts here in the United States that we want civilians to be enforcing our laws, not soldiers wearing uniforms, carrying guns. The District of Columbia does have its own police department, the Metropolitan Police Department. In fact, now with the National Guard, they've nearly doubled the deployment of its own police officers. There's also the Posse Comitatus Act, which we know under a strict emergency, if you will, that can allow this federal law enforcement to present itself. And there was that emergency order last summer. Can it be extended as the Trump administration is looking to do through 2029? It could be extended, but I think it's going to require either a resolution from the Congress or an approval by the D.C. Council, neither of which has occurred. That original emergency proclamation allowed the deployment to last for a period of time, but we're well beyond its expiration by now. This is an appeals court that will hear this. It's a bank of essentially three-panel judge here. What exactly do you foresee coming of what is ruled here? Because essentially, if the Trump administration disagrees with it, I would imagine that this would then head up to the Supreme Court. It's likely. In fact, it's more than likely. It's almost a sure thing that if the D.C. – this is the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, an intermediate appellate court in the United States system, not the D.C. courts, but the federal courts. So if the Trump administration loses here, they'll almost surely go directly to the Supreme Court. Whether the Supreme Court wants to touch this case is a difficult question. It's been argued in the lower courts, in fact, in an earlier hearing in the D.C. Circuit, that the district itself doesn't even have standing to bring this claim because states are not always allowed to sue on behalf of their citizens. It may need to start over as a claim, say, brought by local residents in the district. The outcome, I would say, remains pretty uncertain at this point. And whether the district prevails or the Trump administration is probably too close to call. You're certainly correct that if the Trump administration loses at this round, the battle is far from over because President Trump wants to continue his deployment through the end of his term. Is there a judicial precedent? I mean, this is, take for example, the Metropolitan Police Department. It's a police department that was enacted by President Abraham Lincoln. So certainly the District of Columbia dates back a long time ago. Is there a judicial precedent for what's happening in modern times in the District of Columbia? There is not. That's a very good point. This is an unprecedented action. No president has sought to deploy the D.C. National Guard in circumstances like these, much less seek to maintain it and sustain it throughout his presidential term. Crime rates are not exceedingly high in the district. There's no civil disturbance that's out of control in the district. There's no pandemic. So there's no particular reason to have soldiers patrolling the streets in the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court doesn't usually take up these cases unless there's merit for it. What would the legal merit be for the Supreme Court to have an opinion? It would be the uniqueness of D.C., I think, because D.C. is not a state and because the structure of local law allows the president to be commander in chief it would be a question of whether that relationship the president's command of the DC Guard gives him these extraordinary authorities to deploy soldiers inside the district even for normal law enforcement purposes that would be an unprecedented conclusion but again the district is a unique entity is there an answer to the question who is the executive of the district of Columbia not for almost all circumstances it's clearly that the local law determines who is the executive. But Congress has said with respect to commanding the National Guard, just the D.C. National Guard, the president is commander-in-chief. Ironically, for a little bit of history here, on January the 6th, 2021, the president was the commander, President Donald Trump, at the end of his first term was the commander of the D.C. Guard, and he did not call out the D.C. Guard to quell the rioting that was going on at the Capitol until several hours after it had already done its damage. Despite the speaker imploring him to do so, Professor Banks, we so appreciate your insight and we'll see what comes of this as I'm sure we'll be talking about it for some time as it continues its course through the courts. Thank you so much. You bet. Thank you. Prosecutors continue to build their case against Naresh Bhat, the man accused of murdering his wife, Monta Coughley. Today, jurors watched video of Bhatt speaking with an independent journalist from Nepal, hearing how his tone appeared to change as he was pressed with questions about why he did not report his wife missing for several days. We've got criminal defense attorney Stephen Vinnick with us here for more. And obviously this is a case where the government has said they've got 100 plus witnesses and they are continuing to tell their version of events here. What do you make of where things stand right now for Naresh Bhatt, where it doesn't seem like defense has any sort of alternate theory here? So what the defense is trying to do is just to have the prosecution completely lay out its case so that they'll know exactly what to pick and choose to fight. The belief right now is that what they're waiting to do is to really go after the forensic evidence, that they're going to cross-examine a lot of the forensic experts very closely and then present their own forensic experts to really put a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors about how reliable the forensic evidence is. The defense is using the fact that Naresh Bhatt allowed these officers repeatedly to enter the home to question him, almost to seem as though he was forthcoming. He was telling the truth. Is that something that the juries usually buy in? So that's a great question. That's a very good point for the defense, that they never denied access at any time to the police or to law enforcement. They allowed them to come in and search every area of the house that they wanted to. The problem for the defense is that they found large bloodstains in, I believe it was the main bedroom and the bathroom before they even arrested Dr. Bhatt. One of the videos that was shown to the jury shows that within minutes, Dr. Bhatt is changing his story three times about what he remembers his wife last wearing. And it just that that's it's the best defense that they can put up, despite the fact that when you break it down to brass tacks, it's not looking very good for them because of what they're still finding out, even even though he did allow them to search his house. How much can the defense hone in on the fact that Matkovich still hasn't been found? Her body is missing and obviously presumably based on the DNA evidence that the government is presenting. They believe she was murdered, but yet no one's been able to discover her body. Is that going to be something that is easy for the government to overcome? So let me answer the question by first saying what the defense is telling the jury is that there is a black hole in the evidence, that you do not have a body, that all the prosecutors can do is fill it up with guesses and speculation, but there's no actual facts that they have to let the jury know that, yes, she is dead and this is what happened to her. The fact that they don't have a body is very, very difficult, usually for the prosecution to get over. The case here, though, is they have a lot of very strong circumstantial evidence against Dr. Bach. They have him buying cleaning products and Lysol that was found in his bedroom closet. There's videos of him wearing gloves, dumping heavy trash bags at sites around the area. And then they also, when they seized his phone and searched it, there were searches about what happens when a spouse disappears or dies. So that does not look very good for the defense, despite the fact that there's no body there. They've gotten testimony from witnesses who talk about the fact that this was not a marriage that was in a good place, that she had been accusing him of cheating and she had accused him of physical abuse. so it's it's it's not despite the fact that there's no body and they are left to speculate there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that is directly directly going right in into the heart of the prosecution's case that the defense is going to have a hard time getting around Stephen Venn, a criminal defense attorney, we appreciate your legal expertise, we'll be right back here on the DMV side