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| - US Attorney General Bill Barr said Tuesday that violent protests in Portland, Oregon and other US cities have nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement and defended a crackdown on them. In prepared testimony to Congress, Barr condemned the protestors as anarchists who had no right to damage federal property or tear down statues and monuments that many consider racially offensive. Barr, the head of the Department of Justice, also rejected allegations that he is doing the political bidding of President Donald Trump, amid strong criticism of his crackdown slightly more than three months before the presidential election. Instead, he said, law enforcement and paramilitary squads from the Justice and Homeland Security departments were sent to Portland to defend against what he called "an assault on the government of the United States." "In the wake of George Floyd's death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims," Barr said in prepared testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. "To tacitly condone destruction and anarchy is to abandon the basic rule-of-law principles that should unite us even in a politically divisive time," he said. The Trump administration sent armed law enforcement officers, many wearing combat-like gear, to Portland to intervene after weeks of anti-police and anti-government protests left a federal courthouse and several other buildings marred with graffiti and broken windows. Democrats said intervention reeks of a "police state" and that it is a political move to show Trump to voters as a strict law-and-order president. But the protests in Portland have only intensified since federal officers arrived and arrested dozens over the past two weeks, and Portland and Oregon officials have accused Barr of an overreaction that made a manageable situation worse. But Barr, who will appear Tuesday for the first time in front of the Democrat-led Judiciary Committee, says in testimony that it is his job to protect property and livelihoods hurt by the demonstrators. "There is no place in this country for armed mobs that seek to establish autonomous zones beyond government control, or tear down statues and monuments that law-abiding communities chose to erect, or to destroy the property and livelihoods of innocent business owners," he said. "The most basic responsibility of government is to ensure the rule of law." pmh/bgs
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