On Twitter, WTOP reporter Neal Augenstein reports what is self-evidently lies from the Park Police involved in the gassing of protesters outside the White House last night. Augenstein reports that "Park Police didn't know President Trump would be walking across the park several minutes later," when clearing the crowd but did it because "water bottles" were being thrown.
This is no doubt because at least some in the command structure now realize that the White House gave an illegal order, in using local and military police to clear a peaceful crowd assembled on the property of St. John's Church so that Donald Trump could use the grounds for a photo-op, and are attempting to now dodge responsibility. But the claim that the two events were not connected is an obvious and offensive lie.
We know the two events were coordinated because we saw the White House coordinating them, in real time, on television. "Given that the attorney general was just looking this scene over moments before it began, it’s safe to assume the administration wanted this backdrop," tweeted The New York Times' Maggie Haberman. And that is precisely what William Barr did.
The picture on this post is from Barr surveying the scene and speaking with military and/or police officials immediately before gas canisters, flash-bang grenades, and military police were used to forcibly clear both church property and the park between the White House and it. The Rose Garden speech was delayed for fifteen minutes—those fifteen minutes, when the television networks had assembled their reporters in the Rose Garden and were broadcasting from it, is when the operation began.
And Trump's last line of his speech was a line announcing that he would now be walking to the church. The church that had just been cleared for him by Park Police. The church whose priest had just been gassed and driven off by Park Police in the minutes, the minutes, before Trump announced on live television that he was now heading there.
Police and military officials who followed the administration's order to clear the park for a planned event, violating the rights of the peaceful protesters, gassing Americans as an orchestrated propaganda event, betrayed their oaths. For following an illegal order, they must be charged and, as the evidence supports, convicted. An inquiry of the entire chain of command is in order.
This administration has lost all legitimacy. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley betrayed his country in abetting a clearly illegal act and must resign. William Barr, who from initial evidence may have been the very person to give the "green light" to begin the operation, must be forced to resign by Congress or through relentless public action.
There is nobody left in this White House but traitors. They allowed an attack on peaceful Americans so that Trump could stage a belligerent television moment. As of today, every person in the building, from Trump to the Secret Service agents to the secretaries and chefs, are traitors to their country for remaining in the building today.
