Rep. Andy Biggs — hoping to make the jump next year from Congress to Arizona governor — used a hearing on crime in the nation’s capital Thursday to highlight his pro-Second Amendment view and tie himself to President Donald Trump’s crackdown.
The Gilbert Republican lauded Trump for deploying the National Guard, as did many other GOP lawmakers at the oversight hearing. And he slammed D.C.’s top prosecutor for trying to shut down licensed gun dealers.
“You basically didn’t have a case whatsoever, but you decided to use your power … and make the process the punishment,” Biggs told D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb during an exchange. “That’s an abuse of power.”
Biggs, elected to his fifth term last November, faces Karrin Taylor Robson in the GOP gubernatorial primary. Trump has endorsed both of them.
Trump deployed about 2,200 National Guard troops to Washington last month and ordered a federal takeover of the city’s police force. The 30-day emergency measure expired last week. He plans to send troops into Memphis next and has repeatedly said he wants troops in Chicago, though so far, he has held off.
The administration has claimed credit for driving down D.C. crime quickly and sharply. Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and other Republicans on the panel praised Trump for surging troops and other federal assets.
Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged during the hearing that the city did see a significant drop in crime during the monthlong surge, though she also emphasized that crime was already far below crisis levels and had been dropping for two years.
“In 2023, we finished the year 35% down. … Last year, I believe, 24% down — and all throughout this year we were driving down to a more than 20% decrease in violent crime,” she said.
President Donald Trump last month visited law enforcement and members of the National Guard at the U. S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility, in Washington, D.C.
A Cronkite News analysis of FBI violent crime data from 2024 found that the capital ranked 34th per capita among cities of 100,000 or more.
As Republicans highlighted violent attacks in the capital to justify congressional and presidential interventions, Democrats on the oversight panel — and city leaders speaking from the witness table — countered that a military response isn’t called for.
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Phoenix accused the Republican majority of using the hearing — and crime in the capital — as a distraction.
“This is very obviously a blatant and egregious attempt to redirect attention from a very real and ongoing crime,” she said, referring to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Despite Trump’s campaign promises, the full Epstein files have yet to be released. Ansari called that an “epic cover-up” by Trump, who has denied sending a suggestive birthday note to Epstein in 2003.
Last year, the city joined Maryland in suing three firearm retailers in the state, alleging that they had allowed illegal straw purchases. A judge dismissed the lawsuit. The case is on appeal.
“You know that lawsuit was baseless, right?” Biggs said. “At least 10 times, the judge said there’s absolutely no factual basis for bringing that lawsuit.”
Schwalb defended his efforts to get illegal guns off the streets, and Biggs pressed ahead, noting that the district had teamed with Everytown Law, which is affiliated with the Everytown for Gun Safety, which seeks ways to reduce gun violence.
“They don’t want the Second Amendment to even exist,” Biggs said.
A number of GOP colleagues, including Rep. Eli Crane of Oro Valley, accused city leaders during the hearing of manipulating crime statistics to downplay the problem. They also asserted that the city hasn’t done enough to combat juvenile offenses and violent crime.
The chair of the D.C. City Council, Phil Mendelson, responded by citing data showing that Washington’s violent crime rate doesn’t even crack the list of top 25 cities.
“That’s definitely not the reporting I’ve seen,” Crane said.
Karrin Taylor Robson and U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs are Arizona’s leading Republican candidates for governor
He pressed Mendelson over an earlier assertion that National Guard troops “looked bored” during their deployment. Soldiers in camouflage have been highly visible at major train stations, on the National Mall and other locations, though not in neighborhoods most afflicted by crime.
Some were assigned to clean-up crews.
“Would you rather have National Guardsmen standing posts around D.C. looking bored, but driving down crime?” Crane said.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Bullhead City, asserted that D.C. remains unsafe because of “soft-on-crime policies.”
Why, he asked Mendelson, did the city set up a Violence Fatality Review Committee in 2018 if there was no crisis? He also pointed to a local law called the Youth Rehabilitation Act that defines “young adults” as people under 25.
“Are 19-year-olds only considered adults when they’re victims, not when they’re the criminals creating more violent crimes?” Gosar said. “Let’s be honest. … They aren’t kids. These are 24-year-old criminals.”
Mendelson defended D.C. law, noting that suspects under 18 can be prosecuted as adults for murder and other serious offenses.
Schwalb asserted that critics of the youth law have misrepresented it. The law, he said, “involves a totally different set of adult defendants in criminal cases and involves a different issue that the city has confronted.”
In one exchange, Crane cited news reports that many arrests have gone unprosecuted. “Is that doing everything you can to protect the city?” he asked the city’s attorney general.
Schwalb said the data Crane referred to actually involved cases handled by the district’s U.S. attorney, a presidential appointee. His own office, he said, has prosecuted more than 84% of violent juvenile cases in recent years.
