Attorney General William Barr told “Verdict with Ted Cruz” this week that the Department of Justice has hundreds of investigations underway into the violent riots that have occurred across the country in recent weeks, including investigations into the far-left extremist organization Antifa.
“The federal government is best positioned to address this kind of violence and lawlessness after it occurs because we don’t have FBI agents walking the beat,” Barr said. “And in fact, when the real violence started around May 25, 26, and so forth, we started using our joint terrorist task forces around the country. And there are 35 of them around the country. It involves all state and local in those jurisdictions and all the federal agencies. And it’s the system we designed to follow terrorists. And now they are starting to go full bore, cranking out investigations, indictments against the people who are involved in this violence.”
Barr said that they already had “scores of indictments already” against individuals who had been involved in the rioting and destruction of property. Barr added that there are already approximately 500 investigations underway into the crimes that have occurred from the rioting.
“We are seeing strong evidence of coordination in many of these violent episodes,” Barr continued. “Fundamentally, what you have here is you have demonstrators, some of them go there with the intent of demonstrating, but you have a group of provocateurs and agitators, sometimes a significant group, that try to convert those into violent activity. And they seem to be very well coordinated when they show up.”
“A number of them are associated with the movement called Antifa, but they go by various names, but frequently anarchistic,” Barr continued. “They want to tear down the country. They are different than many traditional groups and frequently the signs of coordination and activity are very close to the event itself. So like the morning of or the day before, and things are very fast-moving. But we definitely see signs out on the street of communication, of organization, of preplanning, prepositioning of things. So it’s definitely organized activity.”
WATCH:
