Trump Wins: Federal Judge Tosses Most Of BLM’s Claims Against President, Bill Barr, US Officials Over Lafayette Park Incident

“Friedrich acknowledged claims that Trump tweeted threats and encouragement of violence against protesters, and ordered Barr take charge of the situation before Barr mobilized law enforcement and appeared at the square just before it was cleared,” the Washington Post reported. “The judge also said the square was cleared right before Trump, Barr, and Esper’s walk to the church. But these events weren’t enough to allow conspiracy claims to go forward without further, specific factual allegations, Friedrich wrote.”

She also refused, Politico added, to grant protesters an injunction against further action on the part of the federal government — a request that could, essentially, allow them to avoid arrest.

“The plaintiffs’ claims of impending future harm are too speculative to confer standing to seek an injunction,” the judge noted.

In their suit, BLM and the ACLU claimed that Park Police “officers attacked and improperly dispersed the protesters—they did not restrain them or attempt to seize them in place…,” but the judge responded that “quite the opposite was true—the officers attempted to cause the protestors and fleeing crowd to leave their location, rather than cause them to remain there.”

The Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior found, earlier this month, that a decision was made to expand the perimeter in Lafayette Square and press protesters back before President Trump decided to take a walkabout, traveling from the White House across the square to St. Paul’s Church, which sustained some fire damage in earlier aggressive protests. Park Police, the report notes, were, in some cases, surprised that to see the president.

“The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the [United States Park Police] 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 the destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31,” the Inspector General’s report read.

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