White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany says the decision to clear protesters from Lafayette Square, across from the White House, last Monday was appropriate.
“There’s no regrets on the part of this White House,” McEnany said during her press briefing on Monday after she was asked if White House staff regretted the move.
“I’d note that many of those decisions were not made here within the White House. It was [Attorney General William Barr] who made the decision to move the perimeter. Monday night Park Police had also made that decision independently when they saw all the violence in Lafayette Square,” she continued.
McEnany said there were “three loud warnings” for protesters to move back before law enforcement officers pushed them back. She also noted that Barr has said the protesters were throwing objects at law enforcement officials.
“That was unacceptable. Park Police acted as they felt they needed to at that time in response,” McEnany said, adding, “We stand by those actions.”
Watch the video below:
McEnany says the White House has "no regrets" about the aggressive treatment of peaceful protesters outside the complex last week https://t.co/Nj065CIsxp pic.twitter.com/CZvfYbBSoc
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 8, 2020
Critics of President Donald Trump claim that peaceful protesters were pushed back on June 1 — ahead of a 7 p.m. curfew that was set to go into effect that night — so that the president could have a photo op, as IJR reported.
However, Barr has denied that the security perimeter was expanded so that Trump could have a photo op, as IJR reported.
He said, “I did not know that [Trump] was going to do that until later in the day after our plans were well underway to move the perimeter. So there was no correlation between our tactical plan of moving the perimeter out by one block and the president’s going over to the church.”
And on Sunday, Barr told CBS News, “They were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the … the media is … seems to be perpetuating at this point.”
“The park police was facing what they considered to be a very rowdy and non-compliant crowd. And there were projectiles being hurled at the police,” he added.
