President Donald Trump said he could call in the National Guard to Washington, D.C. to help tackle crime following an alleged attack on a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer nicknamed “Big Balls.”
Trump has railed against what he called the capital’s “out of control” crime rate this week and said he would call Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old hired by Elon Musk, to check in on him after he was beaten by a group of teenagers.
“We just almost lost a young man…a beautiful, handsome guy, that got the hell knocked out of him the night before last,” Trump said at an Oval Office event Wednesday. “I’m gonna call him now, wanted to give him a little recovery time…he went through a bad situation to put it mildly, and there’s too much of it, we’re going to do something about it.”
Trump also repeated his threats to take the responsibility of law enforcement in D.C. away from the city and into the hands of the central government.
“The rate of crime, the rate of muggings, killings and everything else, we’re not gonna let it…And that includes bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly too,” Trump added.
After violent protests erupted in Los Angeles in June, Trump called in thousands of National Guard soldiers over the objections of state and local officials. This week Trump also floated the possibility of deploying the military when the city hosts the 2028 Olympic Games.
Despite the president’s threats to deploy the military in D.C., violent crime in the nation’s capital dropped by 35 percent in 2024, police figures show.
The president did not mention Coristine by name but the former DOGE worker, who is now working in the Social Security Administration, was identified in a Metropolitan Police Department report about the attack.
Trump shared a photo of Coristine Tuesday evening on Truth Social, where he appeared bloodied and beaten following the attack.
Coristine was with an unnamed woman in downtown D.C. at 3 a.m. Sunday when a group of juveniles approached their car, according to the police report of the incident.
The report explains that the suspects approached the victims standing next to the vehicle parked on the 1400 block of Swann Street and demanded that they hand it over before assaulting one of the victims.
During the attack, an MPD cruiser pulled up, prompting the attackers to flee. Two of the suspects were apprehended by the on-scene officers. At the same time, one of the victims [Coristine] was treated by emergency services personnel for injuries sustained during the assault.
The pair arrested was two 15-year-olds, a male and a female, from nearby Hyattsville, Maryland. They were subsequently charged with unarmed carjacking.
Coristine’s iPhone 16, worth $1,000, was reportedly stolen during the incident.
Marko Elez, a software engineer who also worked at DOGE, before he resigned over a racist social media post, said he took the photo of his friend following the attack.
“My friend Big Balls is a hero. I took this photo after Edward protected a young woman from an attempted carjacking by eight thugs near Dupont Circle,” Elez wrote on X.
“Violence like this in the heart of D.C. is completely unacceptable.”
Musk also posted about the incident on X but likewise did not name Coristine.
“A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in D.C.,” Musk said Tuesday.
“A Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her. It is time to federalize D.C.”
Coristine claimed to have caught the eye of the world’s richest man by simply changing his name on LinkedIn to “Big Balls.”
He left his role with DOGE shortly after Musk left the government in June and quickly landed a new role with the Social Security Administration.
