For weeks, Donald Trump ordered a rag-tag mix of border patrol, U.S. marshals, and other elements of federal law enforcement—none of them trained to deal with the public—into the streets of Portland, Oregon, where they upped the level of violence, grabbed people off the street without charges, and savagely beat a group of local moms who were trying to get them to halt their violence. After some weeks, Trump finally decided he’d done enough to generate footage for his doom-themed campaign commercials (with a few supplements) and took his beat-down squad off the streets.
Understandably, Congress would like to talk to the people who thought that dragging people into unmarked vans, shooting journalists in the face, defying local officials, and filling the streets with banned chemical weapons was a great idea. They’ve asked officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide witnesses to the incident in Portland, and about ongoing efforts to create a make-believe threat of “antifa terrorists” to justify their actions while ignoring their own analysis showing the genuine threat posed by white supremacist groups.
At the same time, Congress is dealing with a whistleblower complaint from a former DHS official who says that Wolf ordered him to stop trying to prevent Russian interference and instead create a false narrative about China and Iran. Those same officials say that the white supremacist threat was deliberately played down as DHS suppressed information that might be “embarrassing” to Trump. But the DHS has decided that it doesn’t want to talk about any of this. Instead, it’s refusing to provide witnesses to the House Intelligence Committee, setting off yet another conflict between a Congress that needs to know the truth and a White House that needs to keep the truth hidden.
