During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr reported that protestors in Portland, Oregon have brought “knives, rifles, and explosives” to their ‘peaceful protests’ that have lasted more than two months.
That’s in addition to shields, clubs, and other handheld weapons.
Barr said, “Every night for the past two months a mob of hundreds of rioters have laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters have come equipped for fighting. Armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledge hammers, saws, knives, rifles, and explosives devices.”
The Attorney General also said that a “relatively small number of federal personnel” are stationed inside the courthouse in order to defend it and observed, “What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called ‘protest.’”
Barr stated, “It is by any objective measure an assault on the government of the United States.”
AG Barr on Portland: “Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters have laid siege to the federal courthouse … armed with rifles and explosive devices.” pic.twitter.com/UWZdnU4YKS
— Chris Martin (@chrisjdmartin) July 28, 2020
Barr’s statements are supported by a recent discovery by Portland’s Police Department. On Sunday night, they found a bag that had been abandoned by a fleeing protestor. It contained loaded rifles magazines and Molotov cocktails.
Tonight Portland Police were near Lownsdale Square Park. A person pointed out a bag to them. Inside the bag Police found loaded rifle magazines and Molotov cocktails pic.twitter.com/ytpu9pZjqG
— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) July 27, 2020
Additionally, the United States Justice Department went into more detail about the ‘rudimentary’ weapons that Barr didn’t detail.
Contraband such as gasoline, hockey sticks, defense shields, leaf blowers, paint sprayers, paint cans with paint, and a jar prepped for a Molotov cocktail confiscated by federal law enforcement from violent agitators outside federal Portland courthouse pic.twitter.com/DFHKV5k8Ov
— Justice Department (@TheJusticeDept) July 28, 2020
This isn’t a protest. It’s not peaceful.
If the ‘reopen America’ protests had seen so much as $5 of property damage or single old lady being tipped over by the crowd, the #fakenews media would still be screaming about it.
Just the PRESENCE of guns at the ‘reopen America’ rallies was enough to send the left into a frothing fervor about how dangerous guns were. But when THEIR shock troops are causing millions of dollars in damages and shooting people at protests, they don’t make a peep.