Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office have offered to lower two assault charges from a felony to a misdemeanor and to drop a bias-related crime designation for two of three assault charges pending against a D.C. man arrested for the Aug. 7, 2021, hate crime attack against gay Asian man Sean Lai and his parents in Northwest Washington.

According to a document filed on March 4 in D.C. Superior Court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which serves as the lead prosecutor in most adult criminal cases in D.C., offered to lower the charges against Patrick Joseph Miller Trebat, 39, in exchange for his agreement to plead guilty to the reduced charges.

Court records show that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Trebat’s attorney, Brandi Harden, are in “negotiations” presumably over the plea offer, with a felony status hearing scheduled for April 20. D.C. Superior Court Judge Michael O’Keefe, who is presiding over the case, was expected to ask the two parties at the April 20 hearing if an agreement over the plea deal has been reached.

The March 4 document filed in court by the U.S. Attorney’s Office disclosing the plea offer says the offer will expire on April 1, 2022.

Charging documents filed by D.C. police and the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the time of Trebat’s arrest last August state that Trebat allegedly attacked and assaulted Lai, an out gay man of Chinese ancestry, and his parents, who are also from China, while they were walking along the 3700 block of Fulton Street, N.W., near where they live.

The charging documents and a detailed arrest affidavit state that Sean Lai told D.C. police, who arrived on the scene as the incident was unfolding, that during the alleged attack Trebat called him and his parents, “faggots” and shouted, “You are not Americans!” A police report says Trebat also shouted, “Get out of my country.”

According to the police report, the family of three was transported to a local hospital for treatment of injuries listed as non-life threatening shortly after police arrested Trebat on the scene. The report and other charging documents say Trebat allegedly punched, kicked, and pushed all three family members, who at one point fell to the ground, causing various injuries.

Trebat, who lives in a Northwest D.C. apartment located near the scene of the attack, was released pending trial three days after his arrest under the court’s high intensity release program. The program imposed a nighttime curfew on Trebat and a strict order to stay away from the three people he is charged with assaulting.

The current charges pending against him include two counts of felony assault with significant bodily injury and one count of misdemeanor simple assault. Each of the three counts is designated with a bias-related enhancement based on the Asian “national origin” status of the victims.

For reasons it has declined to disclose, the U.S. Attorney’s Office chose not to include a sexual orientation bias-related designation for the assault charges filed against Trebat, even though the arrest affidavit states Trebat shouted the word “faggot” at Lai and his parents.

According to its March 4 plea bargain offer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in exchange for a guilty plea by Trebat, will lower the two felony counts of assault with significant bodily injury to misdemeanor counts of simple assault. The offer would retain the existing single count of simple assault.

Under the D.C. Criminal Code, assault with significant bodily harm carries a maximum sentence upon conviction of three years in prison and a possible fine of $12,500. Simple assault carries a maximum sentence of 180 days in prison and a $1,000 fine.

The plea offer for Trebat also calls for withdrawing the bias-related designation for the simple assault counts pertaining to Lai and his mother while leaving just one bias-related count for the alleged assault against Lai’s father.

Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crimes Act, the conviction of a person charged with a crime with a bias-related enhancement allows a judge to increase the penalty, including a fine or jail sentence, by one-and-a-half times greater than the maximum penalty of the underlying crime such as assault.

One other provision in the plea offer gives prosecutors the option of asking the judge to order Trebat held in jail from the time he pleads guilty to the lower charges to the date when he is sentenced, which usually takes place a month or two after the plea is accepted. Another final provision says prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office are not including in the plea offer a promise to ask the judge to limit the length or severity of the sentence.  

Lai couldn’t immediately be reached for comment to obtain his and his parents’ reaction to the plea offer. Harden, Trebat’s attorney, did not respond to a phone message from the Blade asking whether Trebat will agree to the plea offer.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has a longstanding policy of not publicly disclosing its reasons for offering plea bargain deals to people charged with various crimes. Local attorneys practicing criminal law, including D.C. Attorney Jamison Koehler, have said prosecutors sometimes issue plea bargain offers if they believe there is a chance that a jury will find a defendant they are prosecuting not guilty in a trial.

A plea offer that is accepted by a defendant ensures that the defendant will at least be convicted of an offense, even if the charge is reduced, and eliminates the possibility of a complete acquittal by a jury, according to Koehler and other attorneys familiar with the criminal justice system.