AG Barr Contradicts Trump’s Claim of Bunker ‘Inspection,’ Says President Was Rushed to Bunker By Secret Service Amid Protests
During a Monday interview on Fox News, Attorney General Bill Barr contradicted President Donald Trump’s claim that he had merely visited visited the White House’s secure bunker as part of a dress rehearsal in case he should later need it.
Trump was reportedly upset that the press reported of his retreat to the underground bunker during the first Friday of protests in the wake of the alleged murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police as documented by a viral video. Trump’s frustration that the reports portrayed him as weak was reportedly the genesis of his decision to stage a photo op three days later at the nearby St. John’s Church, which was partially burned when an earlier protest went awry.
The tactical decision, made by Barr, to aggressively clear out protestors from Lafayette Park with tear gas and flash-bang grenades to enable Trump to walk to the church was the focus of a series of questions by Special Report anchor Bret Baier.
“A lot of talk about Monday, kind of reliving the moment there in Lafayette park. If you had to do Monday over again, would you do something different?” Baier asked.
“Based on what I know now, no,” Barr said. “On Monday, we were reacting to three days of extremely violent demonstrations right across from the White House, a lot of injuries to police officers, arson.”
“Things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended the president go down to the bunker,” Barr then said. The attorney general’s comments, linking the relocation of the president to a secure bunker because of contemporaneous protest violence, which didn’t occur until Friday night, stands in direct conflict with what Trump insisted to Brian Kilmeade two days later: that he only briefly visited the bunker for an “inspection” during the day on Friday and that the Secret Service never insisted he retreat to it out of fear for his safety.
“We can’t have that in our country,” Barr added, clearly justifying his decision to sweep the overwhelmingly peaceful protestors out of Lafayette Park on Monday night because of the threat to the president’s safety three days earlier. “So the decision was made. We had to move the perimeter one block and that is what we were doing.”
Watch the video above, via Fox News.
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