National Guard to investigate use of 'medical' helicopter to intimidate demonstrators

Defense Secretary Esper (right, smiling) tours D.C. with Attorney General Barr after dispersing demonstrators with flash-bang grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, riot police, mounted units, and the National Guard.

The D.C. National Guard is, at least according to them, now investigating the use of helicopters on Monday to "buzz" protesters at dangerously low flight levels, including below building heights, in apparent attempts to intimidate demonstrators with the helicopters' rotor wash and in at least one case knocking a tree limb into the crowd below.

Aside from being an inherently dangerous maneuver for even an experienced pilot—clipping a building or an unseen power line could cause the helicopter to crash into the crowd below, a crash that in this specific case would almost assuredly lead to a fabricated claim by a corrupt attorney general that the crowd had somehow "shot it down"—the military helicopter had Red Cross markings. Conducting an offensive operation with equipment identified with the symbol is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Separately, Defense Secretary Mark Esper refused to comment on the incident other than to claim he was told it was used to inspect a National Guard checkpoint, which either means that Esper is lying yet again about Monday's events—he's been caught in a flat-out lie claiming he did not know he was going to visit St. John's Church after Attorney General William Barr ordered the violent clearing of the crowd between it and the White House—or he’s claiming that military officers lied to him about the event.