A day after a top Democratic congressman dismissed violent protests in Portland as “a myth,” police in the Oregon city said they found a cache of loaded rifle magazines and prepared Molotov cocktails.
The cache follows on reports of protesters using everything from high-intensity lasers to commercial-grade mortar-launched fireworks against local and federal police who are now engaged in nightly clashes with protesters.
“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,” Portland police said on Twitter.
Police also said they faced mortar-launched fireworks and someone ignited a fire inside the protective fence around the federal courthouse that’s become Ground Zero for protests. The crowd then used shields and umbrellas to try to provide cover for a protester who tried to cut through the fence.
Portland police said the crowd was dispersed but insisted its officers didn’t take part, suggesting it was federal police.
The action came just a day after a pro-Trump activist posted a video of himself asking Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, about the violent protests. The activist, screen named Essential Fleccas on Twitter, asked Mr. Nadler if he would disavow “the violence from Antifa that’s happening in Portland.”
“That’s a myth that’s being spread only in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Nadler, New York Democrat, responded before an aide whisked him away.
The protests in Portland have now stretched 60 days, and have proved to be a dividing line in American politics.
Democrats and liberal activists argue President Trump has inflamed the situation by deploying federal agents from Homeland Security to assist the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal property such as the courthouse.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has demanded federal police withdraw. He also spread a rumor last week that federal officers had been approved to use live ammunition on protesters, despite robust denunciations from officials.
One Homeland Security agent, speaking to the Center for Immigration Studies, countered that it’s the demonstrators who are “catatonic with hate.”
The agent, who was not identified in the piece, described being in the midst of the riotous attacks on the courthouse.
“When DHS personnel are visible, they throw frozen water bottles at them, canned goods, paint and gasoline,” he said. “They try to shine high-powered lasers into our eyes, which can cause permanent damage. They chant and spray paint ‘feds go home’ as one of their slogans, and that could be easily achieved. If they could prove they wouldn’t destroy the courthouse, DHS personnel would go home. It is that simple.”
He also said the protesters, who ostensibly began their demonstrations out of a concern for racial justice, shout racist slogans.
“I’m seeing African American Federal Protective Service inspectors, twenty years’ law enforcement officer, being called the N-word to their face for the first time in their careers, by a scrawny, pasty white booger-eating communist s—head,” the unnamed agent told CIS.
