Trump Bible photo op not reason cops violently cleared George Floyd protest outside White House, feds claim

“Moreover, the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day,” Greenblatt wrote.

“As such, we determined that the evidence did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.”

Greenblatt, during an interview later with NBC News, said, “We have no evidence that the attorney general ordered this operation.”

” We have evidence from all of the key U.S. Park Police officials, who owned this decision, and the operational plan,” the inspector general said. “They said they made the call and they were credible and all the corroborating evidence that we could find seems to support that finding.”

Greenblatt also during the same interview discussed a section of the report that detailed how Barr had walked out of the White House and asked the police incident commander at the scene why protestors were still in the park when that commander warned him that “this is a very dangerous area.”

“Why are the protesters here? Are they going to be cleared out for the POTUS visit,” Barr said to the commander, according to Greenblatt.

“And, at that point, apparently, the incident commander told us that he slumped shoulders — you can see this on video — he slumped shoulders and said, ‘are you freaking kidding me?’ ” Greenblatt said.

“And that reflected to us the fact that he did not know that there was going to be a potential presidential visit,” Greenblatt said. “And, as I said earlier, the machinations were already underway at that point for them to begin their clearing operation. So, we did not find that the attorney general’s visit or his statements to the incident commander were the catalyst for them to then clear the park.”

Trump later Wednesday released a statement thanking Greenblatt “for Completely and Totally exonerating me in the clearing of Lafayette Park!”

“As we have said all along, and it was backed up in today’s highly detailed and professionally written report, our fine Park Police made the decision to clear the park to allow a contractor to safely install antiscale fencing to protect from Antifa rioters, radical BLM protestors, and other violent demonstrators who are causing chaos and death to our cities,” Trump said.

“In this instance, they tried burning down the church the day before the clearing. Fortunately, we were there to stop the fire from spreading beyond the basement—and it was our great honor and privilege to do so. Again, thank you to the Inspector General!”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/protestors-cleared-outside-white-house-for-fence-not-trump-photo-op.html