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Inspector General Report Debunks Claim That Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters To Clear Lafayette Park For Photo Op

Inspector General Report Debunks Claim That Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters To Clear Lafayette Park For Photo Op

The fake media narrative became a big election issue. Per the report, “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtIJXYaYVO8

On May 31, 2020, Antifa/Black Lives Matter-led rioters set the historic St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C. on fire during a night of particularly vicious rioting that had the city looking like an apocalyptic war zone.

Here are images of what the city looked like that night as well as the church:

The next day, President Trump gave a speech at the White House denouncing rioting and promising aggressive action to combat protest violence if states didn’t act to combat it themselves.

About 10 minutes before his Rose Garden speech started, the Park Police began forcibly clearing Lafayette Park where the protesters were, enraging the media who framed reports of what happened by claiming Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr had ordered them cleared and “tear-gassed” so he could walk from the White House to St. John’s Church in order to stage a photo op with Bible in hand.

It was an allegation Trump and Barr categorically denied. But as per the norm, the media had set a narrative and they weren’t going to let it go.

Here we are a year later, and an IG report released just today confirms Trump and Barr were telling the truth the entire time:

We found that the USPP had the authority and discretion to clear Lafayette Park and the surrounding areas on June 1. The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park to allow the President to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31. Further, the evidence showed that the USPP did not know about the President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June 1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the fencing contractor had arrived in the park.

This meshes with what the acting Park Police chief claimed during a House Hearing in July 2020:

“We did not clear the park for the photo op,” acting Chief Gregory Monahan told the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing designed to examine the violent and subsequently contentious events in Lafayette Square two months ago. “There is, 100%, zero, no correlation between our operation and the president’s visit to the church.”

Monahan said Park Police leaders had been informed earlier in the day that the president planned to visit the park to inspect damage created by the protesters, but they did not know when that would take place. The operation to clear out protesters was solely designed to restore order after the agency assessed that the situation on the ground had turned violent, and to follow through on prior plans to install more impenetrable barriers around the park, he said.

There’s egg on a lot of journalists’ faces tonight. We’ll take a look back tomorrow at some of their tweets and headlines from the past year where they accused the Trump administration of lying about what happened to see just where most of the eggs landed hardest.

Stay tuned.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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CapeBuffalo | June 9, 2021 at 8:01 pm

Unfortunately, the media narrative will undoubtedly live on while the truth will stay alive only in the conservative sites. The great unwashed will only know what the masters want them to know

    NYBruin in reply to CapeBuffalo. | June 9, 2021 at 10:17 pm

    I STILL here people on NPR insisting “we never REALLY got to the bottom of Trump’s “Russian connections'”.

      mailman in reply to NYBruin. | June 10, 2021 at 5:13 am

      Paired with “if only we had more time to investigate those Russian links”.

      As I pointed out to a friend who was going on about how at least Biden wasnt under the influence of Russians, after 4 years of intense investigations they came up with nothing. Instead it was even worse than that…after 4 years of NOTHING what Democrats really proved was that Trump was probably the cleanest fucker to have ever run for the Presidency in modern times.

      At which point my friend pivots to tax returns. I pointed out I have no issues with a private individual becoming a billionaire BUT I have plenty of reservations about career politicians becoming extremely wealthy during their time in power.

        mark311 in reply to mailman. | June 10, 2021 at 6:32 am

        “At which point my friend pivots to tax returns. I pointed out I have no issues with a private individual becoming a billionaire BUT I have plenty of reservations about career politicians becoming extremely wealthy during their time in power.”

        How about private individuals fiddling taxes? That’s the specific claim with Trump.

        “Trump was probably the cleanest fucker to have ever run for the Presidency in modern times”

        That’s hilarious you do realise that the only reason the Mueller report didn’t make an indication of Trump being guilty was in deference to the DoJ policy on not indicting a sitting president. Barr’s summary was deliberately misleading and has been slammed for being such a dishonest figure in the whole sorry affair.

          Brave Sir Robbin in reply to mark311. | June 10, 2021 at 9:06 am

          “How about private individuals fiddling taxes? That’s the specific claim with Trump.”

          Trumps tax returns have been illegally leaked. No illegalities were noted. Trump does not do his own taxes. He has lawyers and accountants to them for him. He is responsible for them, but he certainly does not do them. Therefore such a claim against him is rather ludicrous and either uniformed or deliberately pernicious.

          “That’s hilarious you do realise that the only reason the Mueller report didn’t make an indication of Trump being guilty was in deference to the DoJ policy on not indicting a sitting president.”

          The special counsel was investigating Trump not just without predicate, but on false predicate, and was aware of it. This is the basic corruption and dishonestly of the affair – not anything Trump did. There was not basis to investigate Trump, and they knew it. Yet they proceeded on an open ended and unhinged persecution of Trump’s associates, finding men and then finding crimes. The theory of obstruction being pursued by the special counsel was that Trump dared to proclaim his innocence and sought relief from certain aspects of discovery, particularly as they pertain to privileged communications within the executive and the president’s lawyers, via the courts. Therefore, the very novel basis of obstruction was the the president declared he was innocent and sought relief from the courts. Outrageous!

          Only in a dictatorship is this considered obstruction. Quit spouting partisan nonsense. Quit supporting abuse of prosecutorial power. Quit supporting evil.

          If Trump had significant tax issues, the IRS would have hammered him during the Obama administration instead of the FBI trying to smear him with a fake Russia conspiracy.

          Mueller admitted under oath that the OLC opinion did not affect his end determination. He stated quite plainly there was no case for *any* of the Obstruction of Justice claims that Weissmann wanted to glue into the report despite no ‘corrupt intent’

          But you just keep plucking that chicken. Make a pillow to cry into.

          mark311 in reply to mark311. | June 11, 2021 at 10:24 am

          @BSR

          1) Part of the tax returns were leaked, it was not the complete set of documentation. Nor is it the case that no illegalities were noted since there is a grand jury investigating the claims, Trumps claim is that these investigations are fishing expeditions but I’m not clear that this is remotely true.

          Your comment regarding lawyers and accountants is spurious since he, at the end of the day, is still responsible for ensuring his taxes are legal. If his lawyers and accountants have advised incorrectly then that’s a separate and distinct claim which hasn’t been made by Trump at all.

          Given we already know his level of debt and the deals he has made to be refinanced as well as the Trump organisations misdeeds with charity funds its hardly unreasonable to say there is something to investigate. Sure it may come to nothing but hand waving away the investigation isn’t a serious reflection on ~Trumps legal issues.

          The special counsel was investigating the factual case. This has lead to a number of arrests and convictions. Its called following the evidence. This has been to court and followed due process, you don’t get to call that foundation less without making a case (which you’ve never done, nor any other commentator). Don’t get me started on Flynn for example who might as well paint Authoritarian nut job on his forehead.

          Trump did his best to undermine the investigation even almost trying to fire the special counsel. That’s all public record now. I’m not really clear that your argument makes much sense, the obstruction charges were based on an evidence trail not on Trumps legal efforts to evade charges by pleading immunity.

          No offence BSR but the contrary is true. You consistently support a man who has evaded his day in court. Trump has done his level best to avoid a criminal trial but jury. Functional and fair government works when people are held to account and you continue to give the man a free pass for no discernible reason.

          @georgefelis

          “If Trump had significant tax issues, the IRS would have hammered” Nope, that would require the IRS to connect the dots. A specific claim was made during the Trump years not during the Obama years.

          “Mueller” – that’s not correct at all, he said that Trump could be prosecuted after leaving office. Indeed he opined that there were circa 10 or 11 instances where Trump could be prosecuted for Obstruction of Justice. Indeed your specific claim that Mueller stated the DoJ policy was not the reason he didn’t make a prosecutorial claim in the report is false I quote from the hearings:

          “I believe a reasonable person looking at these facts could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met, and I’d like to ask you the reason, again, you did not indict Donald Trump is because of the OLC (the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel) opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?” Lieu asked.

          “That is correct,” Mueller asked.

    txvet2 in reply to CapeBuffalo. | June 10, 2021 at 1:48 am

    The lie will live on even here. In a month or so, the usual trolls will be back to claiming Trump had the protestors gassed.

    mark311 in reply to CapeBuffalo. | June 10, 2021 at 6:41 am

    @capebuffalo

    The report has been widely reported its hardly a secret

      DaveGinOly in reply to mark311. | June 10, 2021 at 12:29 pm

      The facts about the Mueller Report have been out for months, yet still you regurgitated the liberal narrative (above) and were rather soundly put in your place by Sir Robin and georg. The report findings and subsequent hearings are hardly secrets, but they seem to have been sufficiently well-hidden to have escaped your notice. What makes you think others will pick up on the IG report where you failed to pick up on the facts concerning “Russian collusion”?

        mark311 in reply to DaveGinOly. | June 11, 2021 at 10:30 am

        I’m not referring to the Mueller report I’m referring to the inspector general report. The reference to Mueller report was made in response to a specific claim by another commentator.

        You may want to read my response to BSR and GF as the arguments put forward by both are spurious at best.

        You might want to read comments in there appropriate context before ranting about them. Indeed you might want to check the facts referred to as in the case of Georgefelis’s case the response was factually incorrect and actually is the exact opposite to what he attempted to state.

        With regard to picking up on the IG report simply googling the report shows how broadly it was picked up.

How, exactly, are they ‘eating crow’.

Their lies stood for a year, and there are ZERO consequences for their lies.

Looks to me like they got exactly what they wanted.

henrybowman | June 9, 2021 at 10:25 pm

But I watched TV news all night tonight, and detected no trace of egg whatsoever. And we never will, as long as they are in charge of their own makeup.

They use propaganda techniques – repeat the lies long enough and they become truth.

The Dem-Agenda Media still call Jan 6 an “insurrection”. That is demonstrably false. But it does not stop them. They will never stop.

The problem is many people can not agree on what is factual any longer. The both parties skew facts to fit their narrative – But the Dem-Agenda have taken it to a new level. They lied about the Russia Hoax and never corrected their stories. They lied about China’s role in Covid. They lied about Hunter Biden. Trump was right – they are Enemy of the People.

I never understood the fuss, since even if the story had been true nothing wrong would have been done. If the president chooses to take a walk in the park, the secret service has to secure it for him, and allowing a violent riot to continue in the same location is obviously not possible.

They close highways when the president is driven down them! How is a park different?

For the same reason I never understood the whole Russia thing. Suppose the story had been true from beginning to end. The Russian government had Podesta’s and the DNC’s email, and the Trump campaign explicitly asked the Russian government to release that information in return for unspecified future favors if Trump were elected. So *****ing what? What law would it have broken?

The only possible crime I could think of would have been if the Russians had not yet cracked those accounts, and the Trump campaign asked them to. But nobody even alleged that, because it was obviously not true. The accounts were easy to crack, therefore the Russians cracked them because that’s what they do. We do the same to similar Russian accounts, if they’re secured in such a careless way. That’s how international relations are conducted. And once they had the information there would have been nothing wrong with asking them to release it, as Trump did when he publicly asked Russia to release Clinton’s emails that it surely had in its possession.

(By the way, that request was never granted; if there really had been such a deal, why wasn’t it? Why didn’t the Russians release Clinton’s 30,000 email messages? Don’t try to tell me they didn’t have them. According to Wray, they were so insecure that everyone likely had them. So what’s the answer? Unless there was no deal, and Russia wasn’t trying to help Trump win.)

    mailman in reply to Milhouse. | June 10, 2021 at 5:14 am

    The fuss was the media that made the fuss out of a lie (that they KNEW was a lie) and then repeated that lie ENDLESSLY through every platform Democrats owned for the purpose of undermining the Presidency of Trump. You should be climbing the walls at this kind of fuck about!

    mark311 in reply to Milhouse. | June 10, 2021 at 6:50 am

    “What law would it have broken?” As I understand it rendering assistance from a foreign entity is a breach of campaign finance laws but I’m not 100% sure, Id also say that potentially receiving a benefit from a computer crime sounds like it might count as a criminal action but again not sure.

    “Why didn’t the Russians release Clinton’s 30,000 email messages” They released a lot of emails to Wikileaks first. Presumably picking emails that showed the Demo’s in as poor a light as possible. They didn’t need to release more if they contained inane shit, that’s just hard work for no gain.

      Milhouse in reply to mark311. | June 10, 2021 at 11:39 am

      rendering assistance from a foreign entity

      Did you mean “receiving”? Or perhaps “soliciting”? Because “rendering” makes no sense in that phrase.

      But nothing was received by the campaign. Had the email messages been delivered privately to the campaign, for it to use as it saw fit, then you might have a case. But they were released to the general public. To the extent that they were a “thing of value” they were of value primarily to the voters, and only secondarily to Trump and his campaign. Releasing them cost Russia (or whoever released them) nothing. So even if the release had been coordinated with the campaign there’d be nothing to call a “contribution”.

      The idea that foreigners shouldn’t “interfere” in US elections by trying to persuade US voters how to vote is not only ludicrous, it’s also an offense against the freedom of speech which is one of the USA’s most important founding principles.

      Remember that while the constitution which protects that freedom, applies only to people who are US citizens or legal residents, or are physically present in the US, the freedom itself applies to all human beings everywhere and at all times, as the Declaration of Independence declares. Vladimir Putin has been endowed by our Creator with the same freedom of speech that you and I have, even though US courts can enforce mine but not yours or Putin’s.

      So while the courts have decided that direct contributions to campaigns can be regulated, and therefore foreigners can be banned from making such contributions, independent efforts to persuade voters by people protected by the constitution can’t be regulated, and therefore such efforts by unprotected people must also be recognized as legitimate.

      You seem totally confused about the emails. Russia (or whoever it was) didn’t release any of Clinton’s emails. None at all. Either they didn’t have them, which is implausible, or they weren’t interested in helping Trump by releasing them.

Too late. I don’t give a damn. Arrest and prosecute someone for something (not counting Conservatives)

    mailman in reply to r2468. | June 10, 2021 at 10:46 am

    I also want to see those arrests happening at 3am being carried out by heavily armed feds broadcast on CNN.

I just read Paul Mirengoff’s post on this. Like me, he never saw the point of the accusation:

At the same time, the MSM version, even if true, didn’t bother me. Presidents should be permitted to cross Lafayette Park for any purpose. The protesters had had their say, and not always peaceably. They had no right to limit Trump’s movement indefinitely.

Wait. It took over a year to conclude and announce that neither Trump nor Barr had anything to do with tear-gassing the “mostly peaceful protesters” in Lafayette Park, but just a few days to determine that the Capitol Police was justified in shooting an unarmed woman in the Capitol?