A highly critical report from the Justice Department’s watchdog largely clears former Attorney General William Barr of any responsibility for pushing out protesters from Lafayette Park near the White House during racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.
Lafayette Park was cleared using smoke canisters and pepper balls ahead of a photo op by former President Trump, who crossed the park to make a statement while holding a bible in front of a church opposite the White House.
The report from DOJ’s Office of Inspector General condemns the Justice Department for its response to the protests, writing that it “created safety and security risks for the agents and the public.”
The episode was part of what the watchdog described as a “chaotic and disorganized” effort in which Barr strained the resources of his department in an effort to flex law enforcement’s response in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 killing by a Minneapolis police officer.
Though Barr declined to be interviewed for the report, the OIG determined Barr did not issue the order to clear the park — contradicting media reports from the time that the former attorney general disputed.
According to the OIG, “time-stamped [Metropolitan Police Department] radio communications, contemporaneous written communications, and witness testimony” all show preparation to clear the park had begun prior to Barr’s arrival.
However, Barr’s influence was in part limited due to overall confusion about the federal response to the protest, which was being led in practice by U.S. Park Police (USPP) and U.S. Secret Service (USSS).
“We determined that, although then President Trump had appointed Barr on June 1 to lead the federal response to the protests, USPP and USSS personnel at Lafayette Park were unaware of that decision. USPP and USSS personnel also told us that because Barr was not in their chain of command—they worked for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Homeland Security, respectively, not DOJ—his presence had no impact on the timing of the operation,” the OIG wrote.
Barr’s law office did not respond to a request for comment.
The report went on to criticize a number of decisions that were made by Barr, finding he pushed DOJ personnel involvement in the clearing swiftly, giving agents little notice, resulting in some showing up without proper gear or any “guidance as to their mission or rules of engagement.”
“We found the Department’s efforts at times to be chaotic and disorganized, and that Barr, in an attempt to demonstrate that law enforcement could handle the civil unrest without active-duty military intervention, pressed DOJ law enforcement components to deploy personnel without sufficient attention to whether those personnel were properly trained or equipped for their mission. In several instances, DOJ law enforcement personnel were deployed with limited guidance to situations for which they were not trained or equipped,” the OIG wrote.
One Bureau of Prisons (BOP) supervisor said he “did not have his personnel bring shields with them because they were unaware that they were going to be assisting with crowd control. It was not until after they arrived at Lafayette Park that they learned of their role, less than an hour before the clearing operation began.”
Those same officers arrived without any identifying insignia, contributing to further unrest as a series of different law enforcement outlets arrived at the scene.
The report concluded the lack of identification was due to BOP officers working in a prison setting, writing that they were unprepared for circumstances in which they would be engaging with the public.
Similarly, the report took issue with the deployment of FBI agents to the area, finding that “by sending armed agents to respond to civil unrest for which they lacked the proper training or equipment, [they] created safety and security risks for the agents and the public.”
This story was updated at 12:11 p.m.