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Minutes ahead of President Trump’s televised address from the Rose Garden Monday evening, Attorney General William Barr ordered authorities to clear a crowd of protesters that had gathered nearby, according to a Justice Department official.
Barr and other top officials from agencies responsible for securing the White House had previously planned to secure a wider perimeter around Lafayette park, a federally-owned green space just north of the building, in response to fires and destruction caused by protesters on Sunday night. That plan would have cleared the area later used for the President’s walk to a nearby church for a photo-op by 4 p.m. ET, the official said.
But it never happened. When Barr arrived at Lafayette park just after 6 p.m. ET — in a scene that was captured on news cameras and elicited heckles from the large, peaceful crowd — Barr saw that the area had not been emptied, and told police to clear the area, the official said. If federal law enforcement was met with resistance by the protestors, crowd control measures should be implemented, Barr had said, according to the official.
Barr had been told that police believed protestors were gathering rocks to throw at law enforcement, and while he was in the park, water bottles were thrown in his direction, the official said. CNN did not witness any water bottles being thrown at the attorney general. Camera footage shows him standing and watching the crowd for several minutes, flanked by a security detail and two senior department officials.
Just before 6:24 p.m., police broadcast their first warning for the crowd to distance. A CNN correspondent reporting from the rooftop of a nearby hotel heard three warnings broadcast over the next ten minutes as authorities moved closer to the crowd.
At 6:35 p.m., authorities began charging the crowd in lockstep with their shields raised, some using their batons to strike the protestors as gas canisters were deployed.
