The United States Attorney for D.C. declined to attend a hearing on Wednesday meant to probe her office about why hate crime prosecutions in the District are down to a 10-year low. The councilmembers in attendance harshly criticized her absence.

“I find it utterly ridiculous that we do not have the United States attorney’s office represented in this conversation,” Charles Allen, Ward 6 Councilmember and chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, said at the hearing. “It’s not just offensive or insulting to the council or to me. It’s insulting and offensive to the entire city, to every District resident.”

The U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jessie Liu, told DCist on Wednesday that she felt it would be unproductive to attend the meeting, because she believes the D.C. councilmembers running it appeared to have made up their minds about her office’s perceived shortcomings.

“We were disappointed to see that the committee seems to have reached a conclusion already about our role in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. I think that’s exemplified by the title, which was ‘Hate Crimes in the District of Columbia and the Failure of the Office of the U.S. Attorney to Prosecute Them,'” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jessie Liu tells DCist. “The way that that hearing was styled was an indication that a conclusion had been reached even before the facts have been fully aired. And so that was concerning to me.”

In August of this year, an analysis by the Washington Post showed that under Liu, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. has been prosecuting far fewer hate crimes than at any other time in the last 10 years.

This drop comes at the same time that reports of hate crimes have drastically increased, per data from the Metropolitan Police Department. Of the total 113 hate crime reports presented to the USAO for possible prosecution in 2017 and 2018, Liu’s office only prosecuted four, the Post reports. (The USAO did prosecute the underlying crime in the vast majority of those cases—it just didn’t bring what’s known as a “hate crime enhancement” to the charges, which allows for longer sentences.)

Of the 100 cases referred to the USAO from 2012 to 2015, previous offices prosecuted 44 of them, per the Post.

D.C. is the only jurisdiction in the country that is not in control of prosecuting its own crimes—the USAO is in charge of doing that, which largely removes the process from local oversight. The office is federally controlled and not beholden to the D.C. Council or the mayor, which oversee most other parts of the city’s criminal justice system. D.C.’s U.S. attorneys office is the only one in the country that prosecutes local, in addition to federal, crime.

Liu was appointed to her post by President Donald Trump in 2017, and critics have questioned whether her office is receiving pressure from his administration to prosecute fewer hate crimes.

“There has been absolutely no pressure not to prosecute hate crimes,” Liu says. “There was no pressure or policy change after the Trump Administration came into office.” She points out that the dip in prosecutions actually began with her predecessor, Channing D. Phillips, an Obama appointee.

Liu’s written statement to the D.C. Council defended her office’s commitment to prosecuting hate crimes, and pointed out several reasons why her attorneys might decide against prosecution.

For one thing, she wrote, the burden of proof required to prosecute a hate crime enhancement is drastically higher than the burden of proof required to arrest someone on hate crime charges. That explains at least a part of the discrepancy between the number of arrests made for hate crimes (55 in 2017 and 59 in 2018) and the number of hate crimes that were actually prosecuted (four total).

But Liu did not explain—either in her letter or her conversation with DCist—why her office is prosecuting far fewer hate crimes than offices before her.

“We’re looking into it. And I would very much like to understand it better,” Liu says. “I guess what I can say is we know what it’s not. We know that it’s not a change in policy, and we know that it’s not pressure from the current administration.”

Councilmembers at Wednesday’s meetings were dissatisfied with her letter, and they slammed her for choosing not to show up to the hearing.

Allen at one point also said that the USAO’s relationship with MPD “strains the definition of a partnership for me,” and that the USAO should be working harder to let MPD know how they may be able to help the office prosecute hate crimes successfully.

Another potential problem Liu presented for her office regarding hate crime prosecution is the jury instructions—she characterized them as “confusing,” and said it’s unclear whether D.C.’s hate crime laws require that hate or bias be the primary motivating factor for a crime or just a contributing factor.

“Do you know how many times we have been contacted by the USAO about changing that [jury instruction] language?” Allen said during the hearing. “Zero.” (The D.C. Council doesn’t control jury instructions—those are written by a panel of local judges and attorneys—but Allen said at the hearing that he is open to looking into how the instructions might be made more clear.)

Liu and Allen already have a strained relationship, owing in part to Liu’s staunch opposition to legislation he introduced that could expand the number of young offenders eligible to apply for early release. In September, Liu held a meeting with the D.C. Police where both argued fiercely against the bill. (Her office has opposed every petition from juvenile offenders for early release under an already-passed law.)

Liu says D.C. residents should trust that the attorneys in her office are looking at each case individually, and will always bring hate crime charges when it’s warranted.

“In any particular case, we look at what the facts are. We try to develop facts through investigation,” Liu says. “And if we think that we can prove both the underlying crime and the [hate crime] enhancement beyond a reasonable doubt, then we go forward on that. And sometimes we have situations where we just can’t.”