Benny Johnson Was Fired for Plagiarism. At the White House, He’s Embraced.

The day after President Trump announced the federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, the White House invited the podcaster Benny Johnson to sit in what is called the new media seat at the administration’s press briefing. The privilege includes being called on first by the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Mr. Johnson took the opportunity at the briefing to recount what he claimed was his own experience with crime in the nation’s capital in recent years. He said that he had recorded murders on a camera outside his home, and that his “house was set ablaze in an arson.” Any claims that Washington wasn’t dangerous, he said, were “lies.”

“Thank you for making this city safe, because no parent should have to go through what my family went through,” Mr. Johnson told Ms. Leavitt.

In fact, police records show, nobody has been murdered since at least 2017 on the block where Mr. Johnson lived in Washington. And his home was not burned, though his next-door neighbor’s house was “intentionally set” on fire, according to the city’s fire department. Mr. Johnson left Washington permanently in 2021.

Such details didn’t stop Ms. Leavitt from leapfrogging off his comments to promote the president’s federalization of Washington’s law enforcement.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump and his aides have routinely excoriated traditional news outlets for what they call misleading and dishonest reporting about the administration. But the White House has had no such reservations about right-leaning influencers, figures such as Mr. Johnson, who have a documented history of playing fast and loose with the facts.