Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office identified essentially no records in response to a request for its communications with federal leaders and the MPD about the use of federal law enforcement, including the National Guard, in DC and the attempted federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department.

In response to the appeal of a CREW FOIA request for records related to Bowser and her office’s communication with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and former DC Police Chief Pamela Smith and their staffs, the mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel found that an adequate search had been conducted for records and denied CREW’s appeal.

A few already-public presidential memoranda, along with a single, short redacted email, were provided in response to the FOIA request, and a final response on March 31, 2026 included Mayor Bowser’s calendar from August 1 to September 11, 2025, with partial entries to October 6. However, the Executive Office of the Mayor replied that they had found no responsive records for nearly all categories of CREW’s request. 

As outlined in CREW’s appeal of the initial response, it is highly unusual that, given DC’s records preservation requirements and the coordination required between the mayor’s office, MPD, the White House and federal agencies, there would be essentially no records of communications between MPD and the mayor’s office or between the mayor’s office and the federal government concerning the unprecedented federal takeover of DC that President Trump launched in August of last year. 

In fact, the calendar entries provided indicate that Mayor Bowser, her chief of staff and several other mayoral staffers attended a DOJ meeting on August 12, and White House meetings on August 26 and 27 and September 9. The August 27 and September 9 meetings seem to have been previously reported by the Washington Post, which noted that Mayor Bowser brought pages of records demonstrating, among others, how the federal surge in officers contributed to a reduction in violent crime to a meeting with Bondi and Wiles roughly two weeks into the takeover. Records related to these meetings, as well as others that the Post reported, such as the Justice Department’s edits to a draft of the mayor’s September 2 Executive Order promoting cooperation between D.C. and federal law enforcement, would be responsive to CREW’s request, yet were not produced.

With the extension of President Trump’s “Safe and Beautiful Task Force”—which Mayor Bowser’s office is invited to sit on as part of the legislation—now potentially stretching into 2029, as well as a plan to keep National Guardsmen in DC through the end of Trump’s term, transparency into the federal takeover of DC remains urgent. 

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