Trump: Hard on Washington, Soft on Crime

The Trump-declared “crime emergency” has no basis in fact. Crime in DC exists, but has been declining for two years. Many cities in the Republican states sending National Guard members to DC have higher crime rates than DC, as do many cities across the country. The whole operation has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with Trump’s authoritarian posturing.

The U.S. military has no business playing police on the streets of DC or ANY U.S. city. First, because the military’s job is to defend the United States and they are forbidden by law from engaging in civil law enforcement. That’s the job of civilian police. Our laws specifically prohibit the kind of military dominance that characterizes dictatorships. 

Second, the National Guard and other military forces are not trained in police work. That’s not their job, and they are not good at it. National Guard troops are mostly sticking to tourist areas like the Lincoln Memorial and National Mall rather than high crime areas. 

In one of the notable moments of the deployment, a 14-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) T-boned a civilian car on August 20, injuring the driver. And that’s even before Trump’s planned personal “patrol with the troops.” I’m not sure how a 14-ton war machine contributes to fighting crime, but it’s probably at least as useful as Trump. 

Another assignment of military to civilian law enforcement duties: now 20 military officers have been reassigned to work as prosecutors in DC. The DC U.S. Attorney’s office is short-staffed because of Trump firing dozens of U.S. attorneys who worked on January 6 insurrection cases and for other political reasons. 

The DC U.S. Attorney’s office is now run by Jeanine Pirro, a Trump selection from Fox News. She has ordered prosecutors to maximize any charges during Trump’s “crackdown” on DC, rather than filing lesser charges. The Washington Post reports:

“Typically, prosecutors in Washington have had to drop or abandon many criminal cases because the evidence is insufficient to win a conviction. Ms. Pirro’s new, more aggressive approach seems to signal that when in doubt, her office will file felony charges first and let the cases proceed to court.”

Pirro made one exception to her directive to maximize charges: no felony charges for people illegally carrying rifles or shotguns or possessing large-capacity magazines. 

So, just to recap: Trump’s anti-crime initiatives began with pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists who beat and attacked police, broke windows and doors, and threatened the lives of the vice president and members of Congress on January 6. In his rush to pardon all of them, he included a man who not only assaulted police officers on January 6, but also faced multiple federal and state child sex abuse charges.

He pardoned Trevor Milton, convicted by a jury of fraud in a $675 million electric truck fraud, and sentenced by a judge to four years in prison—after Milton and his wife each contributed $900,000 to Trump campaign funds.  Florida nursing home executive Paul Walczak’s mother attended a million-dollar-a-head Trump fundraiser. Three weeks later, Trump pardoned her son, erasing his 18 month prison sentence and the court order to pay $4.4 million in restitution for stealing his employees’ tax payments. Trump’s pardons show he really doesn’t give a damn about stopping crime. And it’s not just financial crime that he’s pardoning. He has pardoned high-level drug kingpins and gangsters. In a prisoner deal, he retrieved a triple murderer from a Venezuelan prison and set him free in the United States.

The military occupation of Washington DC is not only illegal–it’s also massively hypocritical.