OPINION:
Remember when a mob of left-wingers put the White House under siege in 2020, some with the idea of invading and trashing then-President Donald Trump’s home, and Democrats praised the mob and vilified the police?
The Secret Service hurriedly moved the president to an underground bunker. In other words, agents feared that the anti-Trump gang might be successful in breaching the White House grounds during the May 29-June 3 Lafayette Square riot.
The protesters, in memory of George Floyd, murdered by a Minneapolis police officer days before, started four fires, including in a church and a Secret Service guard shack, breached fences, and attacked scores of U.S. Park Police officers.
One officer took a brick to the head that penetrated his helmet and landed him in the hospital. Another suffered a serious injury to his groin. In all, over 50 were injured.
Liberal Democrats and Black Lives Matter-led protesters enshrined the arsonists and brick-and-bottle throwers as saints.
Today, President Biden is imprinting over 1,100 Jan. 6 conservative protesters with criminal records, some of whom did little more than walk into the U.S. Capitol and walk out. The Lafayette gang was anti-Trump; the Jan. 6 mob, however misguided, were pro-Trump.
That’s how Democratic justice chose sides.
In speeches, Mr. Biden makes Jan. 6 his go-to political theme. Democrats discovered a special kinship with U.S. Capitol Police.
But in 2020, Democrats portrayed anti-riot police as goons. Nationally, Democrats launched the “defund the police” movement, a disastrous surrender to criminals that told them the police, not you, are the problem.
“Defund the police” jelled with prosecutors elected with the support of George Soros, creating bedlam in our cities.
The White House insurrection
Then-acting U.S. Park Police Chief Gregory T. Monahan was on the scene. A month later, he appeared before the House Natural Resources Committee. He faced a Democratic majority smitten with protesters and angry at him. He gave this narrative:
“Unfortunately, beginning on Friday, May 29, 2020, public use of Lafayette Park became a danger to public safety, good order, and health, and was inconsistent with the preservation of [National Park Service] resources. Violent demonstrations occurred between May 29 and June 1 and included projectiles aimed at law enforcement officers that included bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, water bottles, lit flares, fireworks, and 2x4 sections of wood.”
Put another way, Black Lives Matter protesters were trying to injure and maim police officers.
Chief Monahan also said that some protesters were “physically combative with members of law enforcement. These violent protestors caused injuries to over 50 officers of the United States Park Police. Of those, 11 officers were transported to the hospital, and three were ultimately admitted. … The unprecedented and sustained nature of the violence and destruction associated with some of the activities in Lafayette Park and surrounding park areas immediate and adjacent to the White House required de-escalation.”
And Chief Monahan told this story: “On May 30th, there were 37 injuries up at the White House. Twenty of those were for the U.S. Park Police, and those injuries were blunt trauma-related injuries to the head, upper body, and lower body. The most significant of which was an officer for the United States Park Police who was on the line on the north end of Lafayette Park, and he was struck in the testicles by a protester who threw a brick and struck him in the groin. He suffered a significant injury.”
This account did not impress then-committee Chairman Raul Grijalva, Arizona Democrat.
Instead, he said, “As the events have shown, Lafayette Square was a test run for what is illegal — an ongoing crackdown by the Trump Administration that is being inflicted on cities across this country, and attempts to escalate those confrontations.”
(This was Mr. Grijalva’s fantasy. Black Lives Matter demonstrators were not peaceful in Washington or across the country. They looted, set fires, and destroyed Christian icons. Antifa-led demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, tried to burn down the federal courthouse.
At another House hearing featuring then-Attorney General William Barr, Democrats vilified Mr. Barr for trying to protect the courthouse.
Yet Mr. Grijalva continued to vilify the Park Police.
“Was this Park Police-led assault on June 1st motivated by partisan hostility directed from above to those demanding justice for George Floyd and so many other Black men, women, and children, and a very diverse group of people exercising their First Amendment rights from the Washington, D.C., region?” he said.
This is the Democratic Party today. The Russia hoax to bring down Mr. Trump. The Ukraine phone call impeachment to protect the corrupt Biden family. They were preludes to the Lafayette Square anti-Trump propaganda.
Yes, Park Police moved to clear Lafayette Park on the evening of June 1. There was a reason: a series of assaults, property destruction and fires before the clearing. Mr. Barr gave the order to expand the perimeter around the White House with a new fence.
A year later, in June 2021, the Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report on what happened in Lafayette Square.
The IG debunked the Democratic press reporting that the park was cleared so Mr. Trump could stage a photo op. Horror of horrors, he wanted to show that St. John’s Church was saved from wildly violent left-wingers who would have success burning buildings and cars across the nation.
The IG report gave this narrative. It matched Chief Monahan’s: “From May 30 to 31, at least 49 [U.S. Park Police] officers were injured while policing the protests, and Federal and private property was vandalized. … We found that the USPP had the authority and discretion to clear Lafayette Park and the surrounding areas on June 1. … The evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ anti-police message is getting officers shot and killed.
The National Fraternal Order of Police on Sept. 5 reported on 2023: “101 law enforcement officers were shot in 83 separate ambush-style attacks.” Since the Lafayette violence backed by Democrats, the number of officers shot in the line of duty has increased 25%, the FOP said, adding, “Stop shooting our officers.”
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist at The Washington Times.
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