The President talked about the anarchist jurisdictions. This is a continuation of his political theme which is that he's the law and order candidate. I understand the politics but when you try to manipulate and distort government agencies to play politics which is what the Trump Administration has done from day one, it's what the SALT taxes were, just taking from Democratic states to give to Republicans, it's what the Trusted Traveler Program was which has been outed by the US Attorney in the Southern District, so this is more the same.

If you remember, the Trump Administration tried this once before, not a new play. A couple of years ago they said sanctuary cities would not get federal criminal justice moneys and we said it was illegal and unconstitutional. We sued them and we won. Federal court said they could not take the federal money that was appropriated by Congress.

New York City has about $7 billion in federal funding which is much higher than the other cities he's named. Seattle only gets about $365 million. Not only - it's a lot of money but compared to New York City, it's not. Portland, Oregon, $252 million. New York City, $7.4 billion. Congress appropriates funds with specific legal requirements, so New York City gets HOME money from HUD. That's affordable housing money, it's appropriated with specific laws about the administration of that money. It gets community development block grant, CDBG, from HUD.

There are specific legal requirements on that funding. The President can't supersede the law and say, "I'm going to make those funds basically discretionary funds," which is what he would to do to basically say, "I control all federal funding." He doesn't control federal funding. The federal law controls federal funding, and the federal law is very specific: Jurisdiction doesn't get affordable housing money if it does this, jurisdiction gets community development money if it does this, the jurisdiction gets Title I education funding if it does this. And the President is not above the law - that's the Constitution of the United States.

Policing is a power by the Constitution that is left to the States. That's the Tenth Amendment, it's left to the States. New York City is a creature of State law and the State, New York State, has the Constitutional authority for policing power. So just like sanctuary cities when he did it a couple of years ago and lost, if they actually do this, we will challenge it legally and he will lose once again because we've seen this play before. But again, it's just for the politics and part of his campaign rhetoric.

Career
Reagan Administration and Bush campaign

During the Reagan Administration, Caputo helped support the president's agenda in Central America. He worked with Oliver North to foment propaganda as part of Reagan's public relations efforts in South America and in Central America. After his work for the Reagan Administration he served as assistant director of the House of Representatives Gallery of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association. He next worked for President George H.W. Bush as director of media services in Bush's campaign in the 1992 United States presidential election.

Russian advisor and media consultant

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Caputo established residence in Russia in 1994. He served as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin in 1995. In his capacity as advisor to Yeltsin, he was employed with the United States Agency for International Development. He served as president of The Florence Group from 1994 to 1999, and stated he "played a pivotal role in electing Boris Yeltsin to his second term as President of the Russian Federation."

Caputo was employed by a Moscow-headquartered subsidiary of Gazprom, Gazprom-Media. He was contracted by Gazprom in 2000 to work for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. His task was to increase Putin's public relations standing, specifically his support level in the U.S. He moved back from Russia to the U.S. in the year 2000.

After returning to the U.S., Caputo was called by his former mentor Roger Stone, who convinced him to move to Miami Beach, Florida, and then Caputo founded his media advising company Michael Caputo Public Relations. Caputo moved back to Europe in 2007 while advising a politician's campaign for parliament in the 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election....

During a March 20, 2017 hearing, Representative Jacke Speier questioned FBI Director James Comey about Caputo, and cited employment with Gazprom and history in Ukraine. Caputo worked with the House Intelligence Committee to respond to queries.Posting to social media, Caputo denied ties to Russia while on the Trump campaign. Caputo told the House Intelligence Committee: "The only time the President and I talked about Russia was in 2013, when he simply asked me in passing what it was like to live there in the context of a dinner conversation."...

Personal Life

While working in Russia in the 1990s, Caputo met and married a Russian student studying astrophysics; their marriage ended in a divorce. ... While advising in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2007, Caputo met Maryna Ponomarenko, who became his second wife.

As of 2016, Caputo resided in East Aurora, New York, with his wife and their three children.[8]