Ex-New York Police Department Chief Terry Monahan on Thursday slammed Donald Trump for slashing millions of dollars in federal counterterrorism funding to the department just weeks after the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Taking this money away, it endangers Americans all across this country, I find it has a catastrophic-type touch,” said Monahan in an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “It really puts all Americans in trouble.”
Monahan’s comments arrive after a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from slashing $187 million in funding for the state from the Homeland Security Grant Program, which was launched in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks.
New York, 10 other states and the District of Columbia sued the Department of Homeland Security on Monday in hopes of restoring the funding, pointing to Trump’s day one push for DHS to withhold such money from states and cities with “sanctuary” jurisdictions that don’t fall in line with his mass deportation agenda.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), in a press release, called it “utterly shocking” that the administration would be “walking away from the fight against terrorism in the number one terrorist target in America.”
