You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

AG William Barr Blames Antifa, Without Evidence, for Protest Violence

HeadlineJun 05, 2020

The Washington, D.C., chapter of Black Lives Matter and a group of protesters have sued President Trump, Attorney General William Barr and other top officials for violently clearing out peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square outside the White House so the president could have a photo op on Monday. On Thursday, Barr defended the administration’s actions and blamed extremist groups for instigating violence over the past week.

Attorney General William Barr: “We have evidence that antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.”

While Barr singled out the anti-fascist movement known as antifa, he provided no evidence of wrongdoing by anti-fascist activists. This comes as The Nation magazine has obtained an internal FBI document that shows the agency had “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” at protests in Washington last Sunday. But the document did cite the presence of “far-right provocateurs.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top