House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith told ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos' that President Trump does have the power to <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/04/trump_i_can_call_a_national_emergency_and_build_the_wall_very_quickly.html">declare a national emergency and order the military to build the border wall</a>. "Unfortunately, the short answer is yes," he said when asked about the idea floated by President Trump on Friday. "In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying, where is the emergency?" <blockquote>GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Let's get right to it, does President Trump have the ability, have the authority, to declare a national emergency, have the military build his wall? REP. ADAM SMITH, (D) WASHINGTON: Well, unfortunately, the short answer is yes. There is a provision in law that says the president can declare an emergency. It's been done a number of times. But primarily it's been done to build facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying, where is the emergency? You have to establish that in order to do this. But beyond that, this would be a terrible use of Department of Defense dollars. The president spends most of his time talking about how we're not spending enough on national security, now he wants to take $20 billion out of the defense budget to build a wall, which by the way is not going to improve our border security. The president seems unaware of this, but we have actually already built a wall across much of the border, and all border security experts that I talk to say, where a wall makes sense, it's already been built We should have a conversation about national security -- sorry, about border security, but first we should we open the government and start paying our border patrol agents and the other 800,000 federal employees who are furloughed.