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.

Attorney General Barr Sought Sedition Charges for Racial Justice Protesters

HeadlineSep 17, 2020

Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors to consider bringing sedition charges against protesters who destroy property — accusing them of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government. That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, which also reports Barr asked the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to consider bringing criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing Black Lives Matter protesters to set up a police-free zone in Seattle.

The American Civil Liberties Union condemned Barr’s remarks, writing in a statement, “Treating protest as a form of sedition won’t stand up in court, but that is clearly not the point here. This is a tyrannical and un-American attempt to suppress demands for racial justice and an end to police violence.”

This comes as The Washington Post reports the Pentagon’s top military police officer sought to deploy a microwave “heat ray” weapon against protesters in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square as Black Lives Matter protests spread to the doorstep of the White House in early June.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Barr on Wednesday compared stay-at-home orders during the pandemic to a slavery, saying, “Other than slavery … this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

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