By Michael Kunzelman

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser are responding to allegations about the manipulation of crime data in the District.

A Republican-led congressional committee says that the police chief in the nation’s capital pressured subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower the city’s crime rates, according to a report by a Republican-led congressional committee.

The report, released Dec. 14 by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says that the police chief often threatened, punished and retaliated against police commanders who presented her with “spikes in crime.”

A separate investigation by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office also found that a significant number of MPD reports had been misclassified to make crime rates appear lower than they are.

Pirro’s office began its investigation in August at the height of a political showdown between Republican President Donald Trump’s administration and the city over control of the police department. Trump claimed violent crime in Washington was getting worse as he ordered a federal takeover of the police department,

Neither investigation found grounds for charging anybody with a crime.

Smith, who is stepping down at the end of the year after two years in charge of the department, has said she doesn’t believe any crime numbers were manipulated during her tenure.

“I have never and will never authorize or even support any thought processes or activities with regards to crime numbers being manipulated,” she told Fox 5 during an interview earlier this month.

Mayor Bowser on Dec. 15  defended Smith’s performance and accused the House committee’s leaders of rushing to judgment “in order to serve a politically motivated timeline.”

“It is my expectation that the crime statistics we publish and rely on are accurate and of the highest quality possible,” Bowser, a Democrat, wrote in a letter addressed to the House committee’s chair and ranking member.

Homicides are down 31 percent this year, from 181 in 2024 to 125 with roughly two weeks left in 2025, according to MPD crime data. Bowser said independent data on hospital visits shows a 33 percent drop in firearm injuries for the first 10 months of 2025 compared to the same period of 2024. The mayor accused the committee of cherry-picking critical quotes from commanders without interviewing Smith or any assistant chiefs.

“Even a cursory review of the report reveals its prejudice: of the 22 block quotes presented as complaining about Chief Smith’s management style, 20 of them were made by only two command officials interviewed,” Bowser wrote.

The House committee said its findings are based in part on interviews with the commanders of all seven D.C. patrol districts and a former commander who is currently on leave. Commanders testified that Smith pushed for a more frequent use of “intermediate” criminal charges that go unreported as opposed to more serious charges that must be publicly reported, according to the committee.

“These combined efforts, as explained by commanders, amounted to manipulating MPD crime statistics in an effort to show lowered rates of crime to the public,” the report says.

Pirro, who was appointed by Trump, said her office reviewed nearly 6,000 police reports and interviewed more than 50 witnesses in concluding that a “significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was.”

“The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported,” Pirro’s statement says.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said Smith “cultivated a culture of fear to achieve her agenda.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

The Department of Justice started releasing files related to the life, death and criminal investigations of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein Friday. Files continued to be posted on its “Epstein Library” website on Saturday.

But NPR identified more than a dozen files released by the DOJ on Friday that are no longer available Saturday afternoon, including one that shows President Trump’s photo on a desk among several other photographs. The removed files also show various works of art, including those containing nudity.

On its website, the Justice Department directs people to report any files that should not have been posted by notifying the agency using a dedicated email address. A statement at the top of each page of the website said: “In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure.”

The DOJ acknowledged, though, “because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature.”

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the files were no longer available.

This photo illustration taken in Washington, DC, on Dec. 19, 2025 shows a court document after the Justice Department began releasing the long-awaited records from the investigation into the politically explosive case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

After the initial release of files, some members of Congress raised concerns about what was missing from the data sets.

“There are powerful men, bankers, politicians who we know from survivors – they’ve told us this — who were at these parties where there were many young women, and a few were under age, and these powerful men knew about it, and they didn’t say anything,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told NPR. They need to be at least publicly held accountable.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who cosponsored the Epstein Transparency Act in the House along with Khanna, criticized the redactions.

Posting on X, he said the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” He also warned “a future DOJ could convict the current [Attorney General] and others” for not properly releasing all files the law mandated be made public.

Apart from the photo that is no longer available to download, Trump’s name and image appears rarely in the new documents available. There are a few pictures of him with women and a framed photo of Epstein and a redacted woman with a $22,500 oversized check signed by Trump.

While Trump wasn’t mentioned much this time around, he was a frequent subject of emails and text messages in another Epstein file tranche released by the House Democratic Oversight Committee — with well over a thousand different mentions — though mainly as the subject of Epstein’s near-obsession with his presidency, as the latter positioned himself as a Trump whisperer of sorts to his powerful associates.

NPR’s Rahul Mukherjee and Stephen Fowler contributed reporting.

D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto sent the Metropolitan Police Department a letter Tuesday pressing for answers regarding its alleged misclassification of crimes and its cooperation with federal agencies.

As the chair of the Council’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, Pinto says she conducts oversight of the MPD every day. Every member of the D.C. Council cosigned the six-page letter after a public safety hearing earlier this month. At the 12-hour meeting, more than 100 residents spoke to their experience with federal agencies during their occupation in D.C. The letter is also a result of the Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee releasing reports accusing MPD of manipulating crime data.

The points the Council seeks clarity about include: joint patrols between MPD and federal agencies, what power and accountability is given to federal agents in D.C., how MPD crime data is classified and reported, what MPD’s general requirements and instructions are, and other specific incidents.

An executive order issued in August gave MPD the authorization to alert federal immigration enforcement agencies of people not in MPD custody and to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the transportation of detained suspects. The Council is pressing MPD on whether this ruling is still in effect, and if so, why. 

“District law is clear that MPD cannot coordinate with immigration enforcement officials,” Pinto said.

She explained to News4 that despite that law, she has seen video of and heard reports of MPD officers with different federal agencies handling immigration functions. 

“As unusual as it is to have this administration step in and declare an emergency and send troops in … we are still a city and a country of laws, and those laws need to be followed by everyone,” Pinto said.

“Everyone,” Pinto said, includes D.C.’s government and local law enforcement.

Regarding specific incidents, Pinto references two Homeland Security Investigations agent shootings in the past four months. Both took place on Benning Road NE and resulted in no injuries. In the first, on Oct. 17, when an HSI agent shot at a man who tried to flee a traffic stop, the bullet ended up passing through the man’s jacket. The officer was told by his superior at the time not to include any details of the shooting in the arrest report, News4 reported.

“The more these incidents happen, not only are they extremely dangerous, but without resolution, it undermines trust in our public safety ecosystem,” Pinto told News4, “and that cannot happen. We have had years and years of effort to rebuild trust with our police department and our community.”

The Council requested an update to both shooting investigations.

The recent allegations of false crime records within the police department, accuse MPD of downgrading hundreds of crimes systematically to show a decrease. Pinto’s letter urges MPD to advise further on their classifications.

“While I question the political motivations and timing of these reports, and believe that our police department is the best in the country, and there are lots of layers of review, it is still important on behalf of the public to ensure that everybody is on the same page about how classifications of crimes do happen,” Pinto said.

Specifically, the letter in part seeks more information on the data reported in citywide year-to-date crime comparisons published by MPD, and how that data is classified. A main argument by Pinto is that accuracy in crime data is necessary to maintain public trust and assess current public safety intervention.

“It’s not just around accountability for what has gone on, which is very important, but it’s also to inform our strategy moving forward,” she said. “We’re heading into a new year.”

Pinto and the Council set a deadline for MPD’s response as Jan. 9. Pinto said a performance oversight hearing will be held several weeks later. The full letter can be read on Pinto’s website.