On Monday after dark, as federal forces took control of parts of the capital city showing the scars from days of protests that at times devolved into looting and defacement of historic monuments, Attorney General William Barr patrolled the streets.
Surrounded by servicemen in camouflage fatigues and striding alongside the country’s top military officials, the attorney general observed the results of the crackdown he’d called for.
One night before, he’d watched from the Justice Department headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue as pictures streamed in of fires and broken glass just steps from the White House. He’d later describe the disorder with terms from the battlefield: concrete dug up and thrown as “projectiles” at law enforcement, the need for a “tactical plan” and a redrawn “perimeter.”
Barr’s show of force on Monday stemmed from the administration watching a weekend of protests, some of which turned violent and destructive, that stretched across the nation as people filled the streets to protest the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died while being restrained by a police officer’s knee as Floyd called out for more than eight minutes to be allowed to breathe.
This week, even as the nation’s military brass has shied away awkwardly from the militarization in the nation’s capital, the attorney general has embraced it, taking command of a vast army of federal law enforcement officers and ordering a violent clash with peaceful protesters. And while the President’s hand-picked Pentagon chief, Mark Esper, is now said to be on shaky ground with the White House in part for publicly disapproving of using the Insurrection Act as the President has suggested, Barr’s standing appears to be as strong as ever.
For Barr, who casts himself as a law-and-order man and has used speeches to show firm support for police, it is not unfamiliar territory being center stage as thousands of federal forces in riot gear took control of America’s streets. The images were familiar to the attorney general, who was serving in the same office in 1992 and helped engineer a commanding federal law enforcement and military response to the Rodney King riots.
In a series of calls over the weekend with White House and Pentagon officials, Barr advocated for a visible federal force to quell the disorder. After Minnesota called troops from its National Guard on Saturday, Barr commended the move and declared that “it worked.”
On Sunday, Barr ordered a contingent of federal officers from two of his agencies, the US Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration, to respond to Lafayette Square, the site of protests and confrontations with police in front of the White House.
Justice Department officials say Washington’s Metropolitan Police force, which has primary responsibility for protecting the capital city, asked for federal help after rioters overran officers, breaking windows, burning cars and looting high-end shops, pharmacies and restaurants in parts of the city. Later that evening, tactical units from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded to the area near the White House, where suspected arsonists set a fire in the basement of the historic St. John’s Church.
Within days, agents and officers from an alphabet soup of federal agencies had taken over the streets, protecting federal buildings and monuments, backed by troops from the US National Guard, some flown in from other states. Barr also ordered riot squads from the Bureau of Prisons to Washington and Miami, where the US attorney asked for more manpower, Justice officials say.
By Monday morning, Trump denounced Democratic leaders for being weak on a conference call with governors and said that he was “activating Bill Barr and activating him very strongly.” A Justice Department spokeswoman later said that Trump had ordered Barr to “lead federal law enforcement efforts to assist in the restoration of order to the District of Columbia.”
Barr eagerly embraced the role.
Beginning over the weekend into the days that followed, Barr took a hands-on approach to the job. He brought in US Attorney Zach Terwilliger from Alexandria to help coordinate federal agencies.
Barr himself frequently hopped in an SUV with FBI security guards to move between command centers, personally monitoring events at the Justice Department, across the street at the FBI and nearby at the FBI’s Washington field office. Some of his forays included dodging groups of protesters on the streets near the Justice Department. During some of the chaos, someone managed to deface the Justice Department headquarters façade, mere feet below the attorney general’s suite, scrawling graffiti including the letters “BLM” for Black Lives Matter.
For days, the attorney general hadn’t addressed the death of Floyd. A written statement from Barr last Friday for the first time called the video of his death “harrowing” and “deeply disturbing.” A televised statement Saturday, focused on the riots in cities and blamed “far-left extremists” for the violence, though provided little evidence to back up those claims.
The attorney general’s language mirrored language used by the President on Twitter, framing the violence in political terms. Inside the Justice Department, some officials were troubled by the tone, fearing it could inflame tensions on the streets and increase the danger for federal officers who were being pressed into work they don’t normally do.
But Barr’s comments were in character for an attorney general who has in recent months intervened to seek leniency for the President’s friends caught up in the Russia investigation and has forcefully used his power to defend Trump, whom he claims was being unfairly targeted by the FBI and other investigations.
Barr hasn’t changed much about his law-and-order views since he last occupied the attorney general’s office.
In 1992, after the King riots, Barr focused on the gangs that he said were committing violence. He pushed then-President George H.W. Bush to show strength by sending in federal agents from around the country as well as the National Guard.
“Some people would probably disagree with what I told him, but I did lay a lot of it on gang activity,” Barr recalled in comments for an oral history project at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center in 2001.
“My basic take was that this was not civil unrest or the product of some festering injustice. This was gang activity, basically opportunistic,” he said in the 2001 interview.
Justice Department officials note that while Barr’s views haven’t adapted, he personally approved filing federal charges against police in the King case after the state trial ended in acquittal.
In the Floyd case, Barr’s tone has shifted slightly.
Over the weekend, he noted there was urgent work needed through “constructive engagement between affected communities and law enforcement leaders – to address legitimate grievances” over policing.
And in a press conference Thursday he equated police misconduct and the violence that has ensued as “serious challenges to the rule of law.”
That change has been overshadowed by some of the heavy-handed tactics for which Barr has taken credit.
The attorney general defended actions by police and National Guard troops who moved to clear the streets of mostly peaceful protesters just before the President emerged from the White House to stand for photos in front of St. John’s Church.
On Monday evening, as the President prepared to speak in the White House Rose Garden, the attorney general walked alongside Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the federal forces lined up outside.
Justice Department officials say the President didn’t sign any specific executive order that gave the attorney general authority over law enforcement officers from other Cabinet agencies. But the President had tapped Barr to coordinate the federal response.
Barr says he it was he who made the decision to disperse the crowd after there was indications that the crowd was “becoming increasingly unruly.” He insisted that moving the protesters had nothing to do with the President’s photo-op.
The scenes that followed, with the booms of tear gas and screams from the crowds as the President made hawkish remarks a short distance away, shocked many – including lawmakers from both parties. Trump’s first secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, called the move an “abuse of executive authority” and Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, has called for Barr to resign.
Still, Barr defended the move.
“There was no correlation between our tactical plan of moving the perimeter out by one block and the President’s going over to the church,” Barr said Thursday.
During Thursday’s news conference, Barr said that after Sunday night’s unrest, including the fire in the St. John’s Church basement, he and other officials ordered an expanded perimeter to protect the White House. That expansion had not been done before Barr appeared at the White House in the late afternoon.
“It was our hope to be able to do that relatively quickly before many demonstrators appeared that day. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in getting appropriate forces – units – into place, by the time they were able to move a perimeter up to us there had been a large number of protesters had assembled,” Barr said.
The days that followed brought more criticism of the optics of the federal response.
Law enforcement officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies, brought in from outside Washington and clad in gear resembling that used in war zones, stood in the streets of the capital. Some directed traffic while others blocked areas to prevent crowds from getting close to monuments and federal buildings.
Social media posts highlighted that some federal officers didn’t have clear labels for which agency they worked, an issue that became a media controversy.
Some, such as Bureau of Prisons officers, don’t typically work anywhere but inside prisons, so there’s no need for agency labels on uniforms, Justice Department officials say. Unlike police officers who regularly interact with the public, federal agents and officers don’t wear name tags. In some cases, agents were using hastily gathered gear, that came borrowed, to do work they’re not usually tasked to do.
By the end of the week, Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser publicly called for the federal government to withdraw extraordinary forces from the city’s streets, which she said could inflame tensions not calm them. The President didn’t consult the mayor when he brought in National Guard troops from other states, a move the administration said he can take unilaterally since the District of Columbia isn’t a state.
Bowser on Friday officially renamed the intersection that was scene of the violent clash between federal riot police and protesters as Black Lives Matter Plaza. Nearby, the pavement near where Barr personally patrolled in the Monday aftermath now bears giant yellow letters spelling out “Black Lives Matter” and a flag of the District of Columbia.
