Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Donald Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged on Monday that the White House “reconfigured” crime statistics to support the president’s portrayal of Washington, D.C., as a city plagued by lawlessness.
Her admission comes as the Department of Justice investigates allegations that D.C. officials themselves manipulated crime data in order to make the nation’s capital appear safer than it actually is.
“I believe it was The Washington Post who put out a map claiming it to be fact-based when it was just based on, I don’t know, accounts that they’ve heard on the street, not actual statistics and data,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House.
“So we went and reconfigured the numbers and as I said, half, nearly half of all the non-illegal alien related arrests have occurred in wards seven and eight in the District of Columbia, where we know there’s the highest rate of crime. So we’ll continue to do that.”
Crime in D.C. has become a flashpoint in recent weeks as Trump moved to federalize the city’s police force and deploy the National Guard. The president has repeatedly claimed that Washington is in crisis and insists his administration is restoring order.
The controversy intensified when a Metropolitan Police commander, Michael Pulliam, was suspended in May amid accusations that he altered crime statistics in his district. Pulliam, who has denied wrongdoing, was placed on administrative leave shortly after filing an equal employment opportunity complaint against an assistant chief.
The DOJ probe, led by U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, is reportedly examining a wider group of police and city officials. Trump seized on the investigation earlier this week, declaring in a social media post: “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for doing so!”
He has since vowed to release his administration’s own crime figures to counter the city’s official data. According to the White House, 465 arrests have been made since Trump’s law-and-order operation began on August 7. On Monday alone, 52 arrests were reported, including “an illegal alien MS-13 gang member with convictions for DWI and drug possession.”
Critics accuse Trump of using the crackdown to consolidate power, but he defended the effort in an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The press says, ‘He’s a dictator, he’s trying to take over.’ No, all I want is security for our people,” Trump said. “But people who haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington, D.C., in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants the last two days were busier than they’ve been in a long time.”
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