In June 2020, as demonstrations around the killing of George Floyd reached their peak, Trump administration officials did extensive work laying the groundwork for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to quell the protests, an Inspector General report released on Wednesday found.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General detailed how close Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr came on June 1 to invoking the Insurrection Act, which gives the President nearly limitless powers to use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Some FBI officials believed that Trump would invoke the act, and were studying what it would mean for their agency. The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI Washington Field Office were asked to prepare information showing that civilian law enforcement was incapable of handling the situation, providing the justification for federal troops.
And, the report says, the Office of Legal Counsel and White House attorneys drafted an Insurrection Act proclamation and accompanying executive order for Trump to sign.
The New York Times reported the drafts in 2021, and NBC reported on Trump’s interest in invoking the Act in June 2020. But the Inspector General’s report adds new details and perspective on an episode that looms over the chaotic final year of the Trump administration.
It chronicles the Trump administration’s response to an early peak in the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. After considering and then declining to invoke the Insurrection Act over protests in Minnesota, the report says, administration officials’ attention turned to the situation in Washington D.C.
There, protestors were demonstrating in the center of the city. Lafayette Park, which sits across from the White House, was host to several demonstrations.
For Trump, protests outside of the White House presented both a crisis of legitimacy and a potential photo op. Lafayette Park sits between the White House and historic St. John’s Church, where on June 1 Trump decided, now infamously, to pose holding a Bible.
One set of disputed details from that day surround who ordered the chaotic clearing of protestors from the park in advance of the photo session. The IG report found that Barr did not order law enforcement to clear the park — that decision, the report says, was taken by senior Park Police and Secret Service personnel.
The report, however, held Barr responsible for the broader disorganized and overly aggressive response.
“Multiple law enforcement witnesses told us that these deployment decisions
appeared to have been made hastily and without sufficient understanding of, and priority
given to, the capabilities of those deployed, and that leadership did not timely and
effectively communicate their decisions to subordinates and other non-DOJ agencies
involved in the response,” the report says. “In particular, at times Barr directed the Department’s law enforcement components to supply specific numbers of personnel for deployments before establishing and communicating a mission for those personnel to perform.”
As in two other reports on some of the most politicized moments from his tenure as attorney general, Barr declined to speak to the Inspector General for its report into the response to the BLM protests in Washington. Senior Barr aides, including Public Affairs chief Kerri Kupec and his then-chief of staff Will Levi, also declined to speak to investigators.
The reports have come out roughly four years after the events in question. It’s a glacial pace for investigating a moment in which the President mulled whether to deploy the military against protestors domestically.
Per the report, White House and senior DOJ attorneys spent much of June 1, 2020 preparing for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to respond to the protests in D.C.
At the time, neither Barr nor Trump had decided whether to invoke the act. In an email cited by the IG, OLC Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel wrote that “while we DO need the papers within the hour,” Barr had “not made the decision to transmit [the recommendation] yet.”
“So the important thing is for this to be ready for immediate execution if the situation warrants,” he wrote.
Per the IG, attorneys continued to work on the draft order until 9:00 p.m. that evening. At that point, Engel called them off after Barr toured D.C. and found it under control.
At the same time, Trump and those around him were reviewing another option on June 1: to place the Metropolitan Police Department, D.C.’s police force, under direct control of President Trump.
Like the Insurrection Act, the D.C. Home Rule Act permits the President to take control of the MPD if he determines that an emergency requires it.
Per the IG report, Barr discussed the proposal on the afternoon of June 1 with then-MPD Chief Peter Newsham.
Discussion of the proposal, the report says, was at least partly motivated by a belief among some Trump officials that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser would be “unwilling to provide assistance.” In reality, Bowser issued a curfew and deployed police around the city in response to the protests.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called Bowser at one point and told her that Trump would take over the MPD. Bowser replied, per the report, that she “pushed back hard” and told him that she wouldn’t “roll over” and accept the change.
After that, and after Newsham told Barr that Bowser said “she doesn’t think you can do it legally,” the Trump White House appears to have backed off from the idea.
The Lafayette Park report is the third investigation dealing with Barr’s tenure as Attorney General that the Justice Department Inspector General has released over the past week. Across the reports, Barr comes off as both a micromanager and strangely unfocused. The DOJ seems scattered under his leadership. Senior officials walk away from meetings claiming not to have understood what was decided; subordinates carry out orders that they never seem to have been given. Barr intervenes in granular decisions, while mid-level staffers appear confused by what course the Department is meant to be taking.
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