U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday said the Justice Department was monitoring the anti-fascist protest movement Antifa, calling it the “ramrod” of violence and looting in U.S. cities.
“I’ve talked to every police chief in every city where there has been major violence and they all have identified Antifa as the ramrod for the violence,” Barr said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “They are flying around the country. We know people who are flying around the country.”
“We see some of the purchases they are making before the riots of weapons to use in those riots,” Barr added. “So, we are following them.”
Barr also said he thought there was a “false narrative” in the U.S. that many unarmed Black people are being killed by white police officers.
(Reporting by Eric Beech, Katanga Johnson, and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Chris Reese and Alistair Bell)
