Trump signs memo ordering the enforcement of the death penalty in D.C.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

D.C.
Trump signs memo ordering the enforcement of the death penalty in D.C.

The president Thursday directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro to use federal law to pursue capital punishment cases in the city.

September 25, 2025 at 11:22 p.m. EDT Yesterday at 11:22 p.m. EDT
3 min


President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Michael Laris and Jenny Gathright

President Donald Trump instructed top prosecutors in a memo on Thursday to pursue the death penalty "to the maximum degree practicable" in D.C., marking his latest move to exert control over law enforcement in the city.

{snip}

By Michael Laris
Michael Laris is a reporter on The Washington Post's local enterprise team. He previously covered national transportation issues and was a reporter in Beijing.follow on X@mikelaris
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/michael-laris/

By Jenny Gathright
Jenny Gathright covers the D.C. government and city politics on The Post's Metro desk. Before coming to The Post in 2024, she reported on the District for WAMU 88.5 and DCist.com, mostly about criminal justice and public safety.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/jenny-gathright/

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/09/25/trump-death-penalty-dc/

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https://wtop.com/government/2025/09/as-trump-seeks-death-penalty-in-dc-bondi-says-administration-also-wants-it-across-the-country/

As Trump seeks death penalty in DC, Bondi says administration also wants it across the country

CNN
September 25, 2025, 6:02 PM

(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum seeking to reinstate the death penalty in Washington, DC, as Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Justice Department will be seeking capital punishment across the country.

“The death penalty in Washington,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “You kill somebody, or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer — death penalty. And hopefully they won’t do that.”

“It’s a very interesting capital punishment, capital city. Capital, capital, capital,” he added.

{snip

[chicoescuela]

1. Maybe he will be the first victim of this order?

That would be ironic

[ananda]

17. Well, he is a convicted felon.

To the gallows for him.

[homegirl]

21. Guilotine execution

on the Mall, televised world wide!

Ironic-NO

Appropriate YES!

[chicoescuela]

22. Oh my

[AdamGG]

27. I wouldn't even give him the dignity of that

Deport him to South Sudan or Uganda and let them report that he died in custody of unknown causes. Or, place him on a boat in the Caribbean and have the air force blow it up and sink it.

[Trueblue1968]

34. French revolution time. Just like for Louis and Marie ......

[Lovie777]

2. Without actual legal due process in the Judaical courts..................

shithole and his henchmen/hench-women can now decide who lives and who dies.

Enough already. These people are nuts.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. What could be scarier than Jeanine Pirro with the goal of killing you?

So, the moral of the story is that if you kill someone, do it anywhere but D.C.

[EarthFirst]

4. I'm shocked that a directive to erect a gallows wasn't part of this order...

…complete with a VIP viewing box section.

[SergeStorms]

18. He can finish the job....

he wanted to start with Mike Pence. "Psssst.....Mike! Stay the hell out of D.C. or the dipshit you admired sooooo much will hang your ass."

[hueymahl]

26. Don't give him any ideas!

[tetedur]

5. If you tried to kill a police officer during Jan 6th you will be pardoned and honored.

[popsdenver]

12. Key word in understanding ANY Republican is:

Hypocrite

[Buddyzbuddy]

6. Nope. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein,Epstein.

Question, do you think his granddaughters are allowed to sit on grandpa's lap? If so 'til what age?
Would any pre-teen daughters of the administration be left in the same room, alone with IT. Or their wives, for that matter? He has immunity and they let you do stuff when you're a celebrity.
Nice try, but it's still about Epstein, you pervy creep.

[Botany]

7. He really is a sick pathologically driven man who is trying to hide his part in an international child sex ...

….. trafficking ring and he is bringing up the non issue of the use of the death penalty in D.C. cases
in order to divert attention from Epstein. Meanwhile he is stealing billions of dollars from the U.S.
taxpayers. https://democraticunderground.com/10143536495

Btw he “won” because they were deleting Harris votes and adding votes to Trump by the millions.

[Grins]

8. So, he's still got erection after calling for the execution of the Central Park 5...?

And DC has a lot of people of color...

The "pro-life" crowd will probably love it. And never see the contradictions...

[Renew Deal]

9. Trump loves his meaningless strongman gestures.

This doesn't change any actual laws. It's just words.

[Turbineguy]

10. Killing people. All-time Dictator fave.

There's no power that satisfies like killing people.

[twodogsbarking]

11. No arrest, no trial , just executions. Trump.

[QueerDuck]

13. Many of his treasonous crimes have been committed in DC.

I'm just sayin'.

[twodogsbarking]

14. First the escalator guy and then the telepromter guy.

[Initech]

15. WTF is with MAGA and their execution fetish?

Normal people don't fantasize about executing others, this is insane!

[thomski64]

20. I confess, a would execute many given the chance, but primarily for sedition

[Skittles]

32. they're CHRISTIAN and PRO-LIFE dontcha know!!

[Hekate]

16. He's a murderous pig. EPSTEIN. MAXWELL. TRUMP.

[Cirsium]

19. Step by step by step

Yet we still have people here saying "but he's losing court cases, and we have the midterms coming!"

Back 6 months ago I posted excerpts from[i They Thought They Were Free] by Milton Mayer. Many thought was alarmist, that "things are not that bad here." I went back and looked at them today, and they seem tame now. That is how much things have changed in the last few months.

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have."

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait."

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

[ReRe]

33. Turning up the temp of the H20, little by little by little by little

until we are all cooked.. We need to turn the stove off NOW. The imbeciles don't realize they are in the same pot with everyone else!

[Vinca]

23. Some people write a memo to remind themselves to pick up milk. Trump writes them to kill people.

[JohnnyRingo]

24. Not sure, but I don't think that's his job.

Maybe it's a unique situation because it's not state.
So far this week, he's taken over a prosecutor, Attorney General, judge, and jury.

[JT45242]

25. You mean like Jan 6 rioters...right

Coconspirator in a criminal act that resulted in one or more deaths.

Please Mango, I'll forgo my normal opposition to the death penalty for all the Jan 6 rioters

[Justice Brandeis]

28. Good luck getting a DC jury of 12 to unanimously apply the death penalty

but by all means go ahead and try.

[riversedge]

29. "As Trump seeks death penalty in DC, Bondi says administration also wants it across the country "

I am not a believer in the death penalty.

[Lemon Lyman]

30. Really

Did he also sign an EO that allows him to pick and choose whomever he wants to sentence to death? Maybe that'll be next week.

[markodochartaigh]

31. People say that

Trump could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose supporters.

This is wrong.

If Trump shot someone on 5th Avenue he would solidify his support, gin them up.
In fact he did the presidential equivalent of that, he ramped up executions of federal prisoners before the election in 2020 exactly to gin up support from his base.