The U.S. Park Police did not clear protesters from a park outside the White House so then-President Donald Trump could take a photo-op at a nearby church, an Interior Department inspector general’s report found.
“[T]he evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day,” Interior Department Inspector General Mark Greenblatt wrote in a statement with the report’s release Wednesday. “As such, we determined that the evidence did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.”
Trump walked to St. John’s Church, which had been damaged the day before during protests over racial injustice. As he did, law enforcement violently cleared what had been mostly peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park.
As those scenes unfolded, Trump posed for photographs, holding up a Bible outside the church.
Then-President Donald Trump holds up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church after walking across Lafayette Park from the White House on June 1, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
The report noted that the Park Police made the decision “to allow a contractor to safely install antiscale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers.”
The report, however, “does not clear law enforcement on use of force and acknowledges problem with its response. … This report does not address allegations of individual use-of-force incidents, as those are the subject of separate inquiries as well as ongoing lawsuits.”
Two of the problems it pointed to included:
“the U.S. Secret Service’s deployment before the USPP had begun its dispersal warnings, and
“the USPP’s failure to provide dispersal warnings that were loud enough for everyone to hear and that told protesters where to exit before the clearing operation began.”
Read the full report here.
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
Trump reacted triumphantly to the report, thanking the inspector general in a statement for “Completely and Totally exonerating me in the clearing of Lafayette Park!”
Park Police officials said the plan to clear the area was in place before a 2 p.m. meeting that included then-Attorney General William Barr.
The Park Police operations commander said “the Attorney General did not mention a potential presidential visit to the park,” according to the report.
The Secret Service informed the commander by mid-to-late afternoon, sometime between 3 and 5 p.m. ET, of Trump’s planned visit. It was to take place “after protesters had been removed from the area.”
The ops commander saw Barr coming out of the White House, according to the report. He went over to Barr and told him the area was unsafe. Barr responded by asking why people were still on H Street outside the White House and that he thought it would be cleared by now.
“The USPP operations commander said the Attorney General asked him, ‘Are these people still going to be here when POTUS [President of the United States] comes out?’ The USPP operations commander told us he had not known until then that the President would be coming out of the White House and into Lafayette Park.
