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Kansas AG Derek Schmidt Asks Trump To Hold The Line On Gitmo Detainees

The U.S. Army, flickr Creative Commons

Kansas' Attorney General has sent a letter to President Trump asking for reassurance on his commitments to keep Guantanamo Bay prisoners out of Ft. Leavenworth.

Derek Schmidt is asking for a double down from Trump, not only to keep prisoners from Guantanamo Bay off the U.S. mainland, but to not authorize any funds which might be used for their transfer as well.

Schmidt says that Trump, in a recent signing statement on an appropriations bill, stated that restrictions on congressional funding, which prohibited their use of transferring detainees to the mainland, interfered with the president's authority as commander in chief.

Schmidt recounts in the letter a multi-year attempt to discover what steps were being taken to place what Schmidt calls terrorists from Guantanamo Bay into this country, and possibly in Kansas.

Schmidt says he was answered with a lack of response or redaction from both the Obama and Trump administrations.

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Aileen LeBlanc is news director at KMUW. Follow her on Twitter @Aileen_LeBlanc.

 

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.