The teenagers who attacked the Department of Government Efficiency employee Edward “Big Balls” Corisitine over the summer will not spend any time in prison.
A judge in Washington, D.C., sentenced the duo—a boy and a girl, both aged 15—to probation on Tuesday and ordered them to stay out of the nation’s capital with only a few exceptions, reports The Washington Post.
The teens, both from Hyattsville, Maryland, were also ordered to complete 90 hours of community service.
Both teens pleaded guilty last month. The boy was charged with attempted robbery and simple assault on Coristine, a 19-year-old engineer who was a poster boy for Elon Musk’s short-lived DOGE crusade. He also faced felony assault and robbery charges that stemmed from an attack on a nearby gas station. The girl pleaded guilty to an assault charge tied to her pepper-spraying someone at the same gas station.
Those crimes have been attributed as a reason Trump, 79, decided to deploy National Guard troops across the nation’s capital.
Corisitine was left bloodied and bruised as he attempted to stop a carjacking just a mile from the White House. Trump shared a photo of the injured Corisitine on Truth Social and threatened officials that he would federalize D.C. if nothing were done.
“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the city, and run this city how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump wrote on Aug. 5.
Less than a week later, on Aug. 11, the president acted on his threat and deployed the National Guard to patrol the city, claiming that it had become a cesspool for violent crime despite statistics showing that crime in the district had been declining.
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson referred the Daily Beast to the Justice Department.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Kendra D. Briggs, who former President Joe Biden appointed, told the teens in court that they “decided to basically terrorize U Street” along with other young suspects, who have not been identified or arrested.
Corisitine explained to Fox News last month that the attack began while he was walking with a friend to her car around 3 a.m. on Aug. 3. He said that he saw a mob approaching him, so he rushed his friend into her car and fought off the group attempting to steal it.
“Right as I turn around, they are right up on me, just a few feet away,” he told the network. “They slammed me against the car, they started throwing a bunch of punches. I keep my hands up. I’m getting a lot of punches here, I’m just trying to protect my head the best way I can.”
Coristine suffered a broken nose and concussion in the melee. He did not immediately address his attackers’ sentencing on Wednesday.
The Post reports that other stipulations read by Briggs include that they are not permitted to enter a car without permission from its owner, must not see each other, and stay out of D.C. unless it is for a court-permitted reason like legal appointments.
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