'Absolutely wrong': Ex-NYPD chief blasts Trump for killing police funding

New York is still the number one terrorist target in the world, even more than 24 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, said Terry Monahan, former NYPD chief of department. But Donald Trump just killed counter-terrorism funding.

Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, Monahan explained, " Taking money away from the number one terrorist target is absolutely wrong. And it's something that has to be fought. And hopefully we're going to win this in court. But otherwise, this funding all goes into a city budget, and the NYPD now has to fight through a city budget to see if we can get the money to pay these analysts, pay for the equipment that we have."

MSNBC host Katy Tur wondered where such money comes from if this funding is slashed in retaliation by the Trump administration.

Monahan stated that certain technologies are funded entirely by this federal grant. The funds are used to investigate terrorist networks and conduct counterterrorism work.

Catherine Christian, who spent 30 years in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, told Tur that money allocated by Congress for a specific purpose must be issued as it was passed.

That has been a key point from several agencies that the Trump administration has drastically reduced, such as USAID.

Monahan said that there were 71 terrorist plots thwarted since 9/11 as a result of the counter-terrorism operations created after the attacks. Some of the work that was done in New York, he said, also had bearing on other places "throughout the United States," he said.