Pirro Orders Office to Maximize Criminal Charges on Street Arrests

Source: New York Times

Pirro Orders Office to Maximize Criminal Charges on Street Arrests

The instruction amounts to a declaration that the understaffed U.S. attorney’s office will seek to ramp up criminal charges arising from the president’s takeover of law enforcement in the capital.


A new directive from Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, comes as hundreds of federal agents are deployed in the city. Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Devlin Barrett
https://www.nytimes.com/by/devlin-barrett
Reporting from Washington
Aug. 19, 2025
Updated 3:33 p.m. ET

The U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, has instructed her prosecutors to maximize criminal charges against anyone arrested in the administration’s crackdown on street crime, and charge them with stiffer federal crimes whenever possible.

Ms. Pirro held a staff meeting on Monday, as did her deputy overseeing criminal cases, to emphasize that going forward, there would be far less prosecutorial discretion to allow for charging lesser offenses in any case, according to people familiar with the remarks.

“In line with President Trump’s directive to make D.C. safe, U.S. Attorney Pirro has made it clear that the old way of doing things is unacceptable,” said Tim Lauer, a spokesman for Ms. Pirro. “She directed her staff to charge the highest crime that is supported by the law and the evidence.”

The new directive comes as an influx of hundreds of new federal agents are deployed in Washington, suddenly thrust into street patrol duty. Many federal agents have never done such work before, have little training in the use of force and are inexperienced in what types of suspicious behavior justifies a search of a stranger on the street.

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Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/devlin-barrett

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/us/politics/pirro-has-ordered-her-office-to-maximize-criminal-charges-on-street-arrests.html