By Allan Lengel
Prosecutors seem to be following the directive by D.C. U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality, to charge the most serious crimes possible in each case in federal court as part of President Trump’s crime initiative to flood the city with National Guards troops and FBI agents.
Devlin Barrett of the New York Times reports some defense lawyers and prosecutors say the cases have raised concerns “that the takeover seems intended to artificially inflate its effect because government lawyers have been instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter how minor the incident.”
Barrett reports:
“One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol. Another had been charged with threatening the president after delivering a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism. And one defendant’s gun case so alarmed prosecutors that they intend to drop the case.”
