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Barr Defends Tough US Response to Protests

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General William Barr told Congress Tuesday
   that ongoing protests in the northwestern city of Portland, Oregon, and
   elsewhere have turned into riots divorced from legitimate calls for
   reform of police treatment of minorities in the United States.

   Barr, in his opening statement released ahead of his appearance before
   the House Judiciary Committee, says the late May death of George Floyd
   in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a "horrible" event
   that sparked a necessary examination of the relationship between law
   enforcement and African Americans in the United States.
   WATCH Hearing LIVE

   But Barr says the ongoing protests in Portland and elsewhere have
   become disconnected from Floyd's death.

   "Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial
   attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd's
   death or any legitimate call for reform," Barr says.

   He reiterates President Donald Trump's criticism of local leaders, many
   of whom have offered their own rejections of the federal government's
   responses and called for Congress to block deployments of hundreds of
   federal agents in their cities.

   "As elected officials of the federal government, every member of this
   committee -- regardless of your political views or your feelings about
   the Trump administration -- should condemn violence against federal
   officers and destruction of federal property," Barr says. "So should
   state and local leaders who have a responsibility to keep their
   communities safe. To tacitly condone destruction and anarchy is to
   abandon the basic rule-of-law principles that should unite us even in a
   politically divisive time."

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