At Trump Cabinet Meeting, NTD Reporter Describes Being Mugged, Pistol-Whipped in DC

At a White House Cabinet meeting, a reporter with The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet recounted getting robbed at gunpoint in the District of Columbia.

Iris Tao, NTD’s White House correspondent, was asked to share her story by President Donald Trump, who was highlighting concerns about crime in Washington.

“I heard you were very savagely mugged in the city, and we are not going to let that happen under this administration,” Trump said on Aug. 26 as he introduced Tao.

Tao then recalled how, on a Saturday morning in broad daylight two years ago, a man wearing a black ski mask pointed a gun at her face, took her phone, and demanded her wallet, laptop, and phone password.

When she refused, the man pistol-whipped Tao in the face, leaving her cheek red and numb.

Tao previously described her experience in an op-ed in The Epoch Times. In it, she wrote that as a reporter, she wanted to protect the sensitive information she carried.

“I felt an overwhelming duty to safeguard my sources, colleagues, and loved ones,” she wrote.

Tao told Trump the incident deeply traumatized her and her family.

“I’ve never dared to walk in the streets of D.C. at night,” Tao said. “Such incidents involved not just me, but also my family. If he had shot me, I could have died right there in the middle of nowhere without my family or my friends, at the age of 23, just starting my career here in D.C.”

Trump on Aug. 11 declared a crime emergency and activated and deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. The FBI has since made more than 1,000 arrests in an initiative to “clean up Washington D.C.,” according to the agency’s director, Kash Patel. National Guardsmen from other states have also joined the operation.

At the meeting, Trump said the 12-day effort has made “a big difference in the streets right now.”

“I have a lot of friends that are going out to dinner all the time now in D.C.,” he said. In the past, he said, “nobody wanted to get to a restaurant or even sit in the restaurant.”

Trump thanked Tao for being willing to share her experience.

“It’s really amazing that you weren’t shot,” he said. “You had a gun pointed at your head, and you probably figured that he’s going to pull the trigger, because these are animals that don’t know what the hell. They couldn’t care less they’re pulling the trigger.”

Tao, in response, said that she considered herself blessed.

“I’m very grateful [to] God for allowing me to still survive to this day,” she said.

The police had opened an investigation into the robbery case, but Tao said that she never heard back from them, despite that the man was later seen entering an apartment building right next to hers.

Almost every day, she used Uber to return home to avoid walking in the dark, even though her office was within walking distance.

Trump, learning that the offender is still at large, asked Tao to forward the information to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who now oversees the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

The MPD told The Epoch Times that the case is still open and no arrest has been made.

A crime report from the MPD shows a 27 percent drop in violent crime in Washington from last year and an 8 percent decrease in crime overall. The department also documented 100 homicides in the District of Columbia so far this year, down from 112 over the same period last year.

The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee has questioned the accuracy of the crime statistics.

On Aug. 25, it launched a probe into allegations of data manipulation. The committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), cited a recent settlement agreement related to accusations that senior officials at the MPD had falsified records to “artificially lower reported crime rates.”

On Aug. 21, Trump met with law enforcement and the National Guard in the city.

“You do the job on safety, and I’ll get this place fixed up physically, and we’re going to be so proud of it at the end of six months,” he told them.

A day later, he announced that Chicago will be the next target for a crime crackdown.

This story has been updated with a response from the MPD.