WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi’s directive effectively replacing the Washington, D.C., police chief was “unlawful,” the capital’s attorney general wrote in a late Thursday memo, as President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s law enforcement devolved into a legal clash of powers.

The memo from Attorney General Brian Schwalb argues that Bondi’s order hours earlier naming an “emergency police commissioner” and vacating district rules limiting local police cooperation with immigration authorities could not be followed by the city’s police force.

The memo for Police Chief Pamela Smith said local officers must continue to follow her orders over Bondi’s under Schwalb’s interpretation of the law, setting up a potential legal clash between the heavily Democratic district and the Republican administration.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote on social media that “there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”