Barr to testify Portland protests have been ‘hijacked,’ calls Trump Russia probe ‘bogus’

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday will testify to Congress about the protests following George Floyd’s death and denounce violent riots that have emerged across the country.

In his opening statement released before the House Judiciary Committee hearing, Barr says that Floyd’s death at the hands of police in May “understandably jarred the whole country and forced us to reflect on longstanding issues in our nation.”

And while it was a “shocking event,” Barr will say, “The fact is that such events are fortunately quite rare.”

“According to statistics compiled by the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men killed by police so far this year is eight. The number of unarmed white men killed by police over the same time period is 11,” he will testify.

The hearing was set to begin at 10 a.m. ET, but has been delayed by about 45 minutes because Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was involved in some kind of accident on his way to Washington from New York, a spokesman for the committee said, adding that nobody was hurt.

Barr says in his statement that the decision to deploy federal agents to several cities across the country where demonstrations are taking place “has nothing to do with the problem of violent mob rioting” and instead is “designed to help state and local law enforcement to meet their basic responsibility to solve crimes and keep their communities safe.”

The attorney general, however, then specifically addresses the situation in Portland, saying, “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. The current situation in Portland is a telling example.”

Barr will also discuss the Russia investigation, which he describes as a “bogus Russiagate scandal” that involved “grave abuses.”

Barr also will say the president has not interfered in any decisions and that all matters have been left to his “independent judgment.”