Why the new case against Bill Barr could be a game-changer
crossing fingers and toes.
Why the new case against Bill Barr could be a game-changer
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/why-the-new-case-against-bill-barr-could-be-a-game-changer/
Published 8 hours ago on June 19, 2020
No attorney general since John Mitchell has gotten away with assaulting the rule of law more than Bill Barr. But unlike Mitchell, who served 19 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Barr has yet to be held accountable for his ever-expanding laundry list of outrageous misdeeds and derelictions.
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But where Congress and Barrs critics have come up empty, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement may ultimately succeed. On June 4, BLMs Washington, D.C., chapter and five individuals filed a novel and potentially far-reaching federal lawsuit against Barr, President Trump, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Army Chief of Staff General James McConville and other law enforcement officials, alleging their First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated when peaceful demonstrators were violently removed from Lafayette Square, just outside the gates of the White House, on the evening of June 1.
The individual plaintiffs, who include a nine-year-old boy, were among thousands of demonstrators who had gathered to protest the murder of George Floyd. The lawsuit (as it was later amended) alleges that without provocation, and well before a 7 p.m. curfew was scheduled to take effect, agents in the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Park Police, D.C. National Guard, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and U.S. Military Police fired tear gas, pepper spray capsules, rubber bullets, and flash bombs into the crowd to shatter the peaceful gathering, forcing demonstrators to flee the area. Many peaceful demonstrators were injured, some severely.
The reason the square was cleared, the lawsuit charges, was to permit the president to walk to a photo opportunity at St. Johns Episcopal Church, accompanied by Barr, Esper, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Ivanka Trump, and other senior advisers. Outside the church, Trump paused briefly for pictures, clumsily raising a Bible in his right hand. He returned to the White House at approximately 7:09 p.m. without entering the church or uttering a word of prayer, conciliation or condolence.
The photo stunt, according to the suit, was a wholly illegal reason for abridging the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and the others assembled in Lafayette Square.............................
Shanti Mama
(1,288 posts)Barr must be held accountable.
ffr
(22,670 posts)cstanleytech
(26,291 posts)Mersky
(4,982 posts)I had not seen it before.
thesquanderer
(11,989 posts)...if that were the case, why not just wait another <45 minutes until curfew, when the crowd would have probably easily and willingly dispersed anyway?
dmr
(28,347 posts)I hope this lawsuit sees success. Barr, Donald, etc were totally wrong.
If any one person in this country that should be first to assure your constitutional rights, it should be the top law enforcement officer - the Attorney General. Unfortunately we have one in name only - that's pretty damn scary, and, imo, criminal.
keithbvadu2
(36,809 posts)Kicking a priest and a follower out of their own church with gov't forces for a Trump photo op is religious freedom to the Trump Christians and evangelicals.
Surely they would accept that for their own churches.
niyad
(113,315 posts)be held accountable.
iluvtennis
(19,861 posts)tikka
(762 posts)They should add her as a defendent. She's responsible for a lot of sh!t they pull.
Blue Owl
(50,383 posts)n/t