Trump threatens federal takeover of D.C. after attack on DOGE worker

A protégé of Elon Musk and former DOGE staffer was injured in an attempted carjacking early Sunday morning in D.C., two people familiar with the incident said, in an attack that captured the attention of President Donald Trump and reinspired his threats to take over the nation’s capital.

“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who helmed the U.S. DOGE Service, wrote on X that a DOGE “team member” was attacked, and Musk called to federalize D.C. The two people familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, identified the victim as Edward Coristine, who is also known by the nickname “Big Balls.”

Trump’s Truth Social post was accompanied by an image of a young person smeared in blood, sitting shirtless on the ground.

D.C. police have arrested a 15-year-old boy and girl from Maryland and charged them with unarmed carjacking, the department said in a news release. Two other people familiar with the details of the case, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the suspects are being held at the city’s youth detention center.

The attack is the latest seemingly random assault on a federal staffer in Washington, intensifying scrutiny of the nation’s capital from Congress and the White House. In June, 21-year-old congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym was killed in crossfire near the District’s convention center. He was a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, working for Republican Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas. No one has been charged in his death.

Trump and a Republican Congress have cast the Democratic-led capital as a place ruined by liberal policies.

The office of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser declined to comment Tuesday.

Year to date, violent crime is down 26 % in the District compared with 2024, according to D.C. police data. On Tuesday, Trump called for children as young as 14 to be prosecuted as adults, adding that he may have “no choice” but to take over the city.

“Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime,” he wrote about Sunday’s incident. “If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump posted on Truth Social soon after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro visited the White House on Tuesday.

Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital, said she spoke with Trump about D.C. crime. In a video posted to her X account, she said: “Our job is to get guns off the street, drugs off the street, take care of those individuals who are threatening, carjacking other people and make this city safe and clean again. That’s just what we’re going to do. And if you don’t buy into it, you’re going to have to deal with us.”

Tim Lauer, a spokesperson for Pirro, declined to comment on the Coristine case, saying it was not handled by the U.S. attorney’s office. Lauer also declined to confirm whether Pirro had flagged the case to Trump during their Tuesday meeting.

Under D.C. law, the attorney general’s office prosecutes most juvenile crime. The U.S. attorney for D.C. – the federal prosecutor in charge of most adult criminal cases in the District – has the power to charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults if they are accused of certain violent crimes, including murder, rape, armed robbery and burglary.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) said he could not comment on specific cases but called the incident “disturbing.”

“No one who lives in, works in, or visits D.C. should experience this; it is horrific and disturbing,” he said in a statement. “I cannot comment on specific cases, but know that when [the Metropolitan Police Department] brings us cases with sufficient evidence of juveniles who have broken the law and hurt people, we will prosecute them and ensure they face consequences for their actions.”

A spokesman for the office also declined to provide information about the case, citing juvenile confidentiality laws.

The attempted carjacking occurred about 3 a.m. Sunday in the 1400 block of Swann Street Northwest, a residential, tree-lined area. According to D.C. police, the teens approached Coristine and one other person, who were “standing next to their vehicle,” then “demanded the vehicle and assaulted one of the victims.”

During the assault, a D.C. police cruiser “pulled into the block causing the suspects to flee,” the police department said.

One of the victims was treated on the scene. It was not a targeted attack, a D.C. police spokesman said.

Earlier this year, Coristine moved into new roles as a senior adviser at the State and Homeland Security departments, raising concerns among some diplomats and others about his potential access to sensitive information and the growing reach of his tech billionaire boss into America’s diplomatic apparatus.

Coristine, who is now working at the Social Security Administration, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump has long derided the capital as a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap” and pledged to turn it around. This spring, he ordered the creation of the “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force,” a vehicle for his long-held fixations on quality-of-life issues in the city, including homelessness encampments and graffiti, and his broader mission to ramp up deportations and arrests nationwide.

At an executive order signing Tuesday, Trump said “somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt” and said D.C. will have to “straighten their act out in the terms of government and in terms of protection, or we’re going to have to federalize and run it the way it’s supposed to be run.”

Democrats have long controlled every branch of local government, though D.C. officials wield limited power. Congress can nullify local laws and can give the president’s administration control of much of the city’s public safety apparatus. D.C. won limited self-government in 1973 when Congress passed the Home Rule Act, giving residents the power to elect their own mayor and city council.

The D.C. Police Union on Tuesday pointed to a handful of D.C. Council members – Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) and Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) – as “radicals” to blame for Trump’s threats of a federal takeover. “This situation could’ve been easily avoided,” the union wrote on X, criticizing the council members’ support of a package of police overhauls they passed in 2020.