DC AG Claims With Straight Face Youth Crime Is Under Control In His City

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb claimed Tuesday on CNN’s “The Arena With Kasie Hunt” that his office is “holding young people” accountable for their crimes after the host read off headlines of attacks committed by juveniles.

Democratic lawmakers and media pundits have pushed back against President Donald Trump after he announced the National Guard would deploy to the nation’s capital to combat crime. While speaking with Schwalb, CNN host Kasie Hunt asked the city’s attorney general if he believes laws allowing people “up to the age of 24 years old” to potentially receive “more lenient sentences from judges” are working after listing headlines of brutal attacks.

“OK, these headlines are different from when I first came to the city. Thirteen-year-old girl, 13, sentenced to seven years for 2023, beating death of a D.C. man, teen sentenced and killing of [a] Lyft driver who came to [the] U.S. seeking safety. This was a guy who was a U.S. military interpreter who was shot and killed in an attempted carjacking, again by a 16-year-old,” Hunt said. “The law allows people up to the age of 24 years old to potentially have more lenient sentences from judges. Is that working for people in D.C.?”

“My office, since I’ve been the attorney general, is prosecuting juvenile cases and holding young people who hurt other people accountable every day at higher rates and higher numbers than long before the pandemic,” Schwalb said. “So much so that our mayor had to issue an executive order expanding the capacity of our juvenile detention facilities to hold people that we are prosecuting.”

During a press conference Monday, Trump said he had officially invoked Section 40 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploying the National Guard. (RELATED: Man Shot And Killed Just Blocks From DC Protest Against Trump Crime Crackdown)

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The order from the president comes as a slew of high-profile violent crime cases swept through the city, prompting Trump on Wednesday to float the idea of bringing in the National Guard.

Hunt went on to ask the city’s attorney general if he believes some juveniles found guilty in certain cases should be prosecuted as adults, to which he advocated for Washington’s current system.

“All of these young people that are prosecuted under the law can in certain circumstances be prosecuted as adults under our existing laws and can be prosecuted as juveniles under other circumstances. And our laws are working. Our prosecution is working,” Schwalb said.

“And you’re exactly right,” Schwalb said. “The U.S. attorney’s office in our city has jurisdiction over adults. The vast majority of crime that occurs in our city is committed by adults, not juveniles. The jurisdiction to prosecute juveniles in our family court sits under our laws with my office, the office of attorney general.”

During an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Monday, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro of the District of Columbia told the host that criminals in the city have been “emboldened for a variety of reasons.” Pirro said there are “crews” of teens between the ages of 14 and 17 who commit crimes because they are “below the age of criminal responsibility unless they commit the crime of murder, rape one, armed robbery or burglary in the first degree.”

In a fact sheet released Monday, the White House said that “the number of juveniles arrested in Washington, D.C., has gone up each year since 2020 — many of whom have had prior arrests for violent crimes.”

The announcement of the National Guard comes on the heels of former Department of Government Efficiency staff member Edward Coristine, also known online as “Big Balls,” being severely beaten after intervening in an attempted unarmed carjacking near Dupont Circle. According to the MPD report obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, officials estimated that approximately 10 suspects fled the scene before officers arrived, but they later arrested two 15-year-olds.

In addition to the attack on Coristine, a GOP intern was shot and killed June 30, and two Israeli Embassy staff members were gunned down near the Capital Jewish Museum in May.

Despite Democrats and legacy media pundits attempting to downplay the city’s crime rate by pointing to how it dropped 35% in 2024, their reliance on local police data excludes crimes such as felony and aggravated assault.

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