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riversedge

(70,231 posts)
Fri Jun 19, 2020, 03:54 PM Jun 2020

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 Barr’s critics have come up empty, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement may ultimately succeed. On June 4, BLM’s 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. John’s 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.”............................

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thesquanderer

(11,989 posts)
9. Barr says the crowd was dispersed, not for the photo op, but to establish a new perimeter. But...
Fri Jun 19, 2020, 08:00 PM
Jun 2020

...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)
11. Thank you for this link.
Sat Jun 20, 2020, 10:21 AM
Jun 2020

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)
3. Kicking a priest and a follower out of their own church with gov't forces for a Trump photo op is re
Fri Jun 19, 2020, 05:39 PM
Jun 2020

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)
5. Wishing these brave ones all success. The thugs who comprise this looming dictatorship MUST
Fri Jun 19, 2020, 06:50 PM
Jun 2020

be held accountable.

tikka

(762 posts)
8. It was reportedly Kremlin Barbie"s idea
Fri Jun 19, 2020, 07:23 PM
Jun 2020

They should add her as a defendent. She's responsible for a lot of sh!t they pull.

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