Where to even start.
Attorney General William Barr is testifying before congress today, including about the need for federal law enforcement personnel to defend a federal courthouse building in Portland, Oregon. You can find his opening statement here.
I assume that most of you have seen the videos of the courthouse siege on Twitter; they are not being broadcast by the mainstream media, which is hewing to the myth that violence by protestors is, well, a myth (to quote Jerry Nadler in an ambush interview yesterday on cellphone video).
Whether you have seen the video of rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and shooting commercial grade fireworks at the at the courthouse or not, Barr's opening remarks on this subject are jarring:
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims. The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles, and explosive devices. Inside the courthouse are a relatively small number of federal law enforcement personnel charged with a defensive mission: to protect the courthouse, home to Article III federal judges, from being overrun and destroyed.
What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called a protest; it is, by any objective measure, an assault on the Government of the United States. In recent nights, rioters have barricaded the front door of the courthouse, pried plywood off the windows with crowbars, and thrown commercial-grade fireworks into the building in an apparent attempt to burn it down with federal personnel inside. The rioters have started fires outside the building, and then systematically attacked federal law enforcement officers who attempt to put them out—for example, by pelting the officers with rocks, frozen water bottles, cans of food, and balloons filled with fecal matter. A recent video showed a mob enthusiastically beating a Deputy U.S. Marshal who was trying to protect the courthouse – a property of the United States government funded by this Congress – from further destruction. A number of federal officers have been injured, including one severely burned by a mortar-style firework and three who have suffered serious eye injuries and may be permanently blind.
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. Nor could such brazen acts of lawlessness plausibly be justified by a concern that police officers in Minnesota or elsewhere defied the law.
Remarkably, the response from many in the media and local elected offices to this organized assault has been to blame the federal government. To state what should be obvious, peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses, tear down plywood with crowbars, or launch fecal matter at federal officers. Such acts are in fact federal crimes under statutes enacted by this Congress.
I find it utterly astounding that even in the context of a bitter presidential election contest the Attorney General of the United States has to justify before congress his decision to deploy a relatively small contingent of federal law enforcement officers to a federal courthouse to keep "protesters" from removing plywood protection and throwing destructive devices into the building with the clear intention to burn it down.
Is this not self-evident, or am I missing something?
What good are, for instance, our civil rights statutes without a federal courthouse in which to seek their enforcement?
When these lefties wish to file another lawsuit against Trump where do they intend to venue it? CHOP court?
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