Justice Department investigating DC police over Trump allegations of โ€˜fakeโ€™ crime data


The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating whether Washington, D.C. officials manipulated crime data after Donald Trump accused the capital city of creating โ€œfake crime numbersโ€ to undermine his federal takeover.

On his Truth Social account on Monday, Trump accused D.C. officials of manipulating data to create a โ€œfalse illusion of safetyโ€ while his critics accuse the White House of exaggerating reports of violent crime to justify an unprecedented mandate.

โ€œThis is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!โ€ Trump wrote.

Last week, the president declared what he called a โ€œcrime emergencyโ€ to justify his administration taking control of the cityโ€™s Metropolitan Police Department while deploying National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents into the cityโ€™s streets, claiming that the White House must โ€œrescueโ€ the city from โ€œcrime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.โ€

He claimed the city is overrun with โ€œbloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,โ€ though reports of violent crime in the city have plummeted, along with national downward trends of violent crime rates.

Federal prosecutors are investigating DC officials following Trumpโ€™s allegations that police manipulated crime data
Federal prosecutors are investigating DC officials following Trumpโ€™s allegations that police manipulated crime data (AP)

The capital city โ€œwas the most unsafe โ€˜cityโ€™ in the United States, and perhaps the World,โ€ he wrote on Monday. โ€œNow, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!โ€

Despite the administrationโ€™s claims that crime is โ€œout of controlโ€ in D.C., the data shows the opposite: 2024 saw the lowest violent crime rates in the capital in more than 30 years, while reports of violent crime within the first seven months of 2025 have plunged 27 percent from last year.

Homicides are down 11 percent, according to city data.

Those rates mirror national downward trends, according to FBI crime data released during Trumpโ€™s administration.

This is a developing story

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