Barr Told Prosecutors to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence
Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.
The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who described Barr’s comments on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions. Late Wednesday, a department spokesman said that Barr did not direct the civil rights division to explore this idea.
The directives are in keeping with Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Durkan, a Democrat, Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked.
A Justice Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported Barr’s remarks about sedition.
During a speech Wednesday night, Barr noted that the Supreme Court had determined that the executive branch had “virtually unchecked discretion” in deciding whether to prosecute cases. He did not mention Durkan or the sedition statute.
“The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,” Barr said in remarks at an event in suburban Washington celebrating the Constitution. “That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.”
The disclosures came as Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if Trump lost. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Trump lost and that the country faced “a clear fork in the road.”
Barr’s actions have thrust the Justice Department into the political fray at a time when Democrats and former law enforcement officials have expressed fears that he is politicizing the department, particularly by intervening in legal matters in ways that benefit Trump or his circle of friends and advisers.
The protest zone in Seattle became a flash point in the national debate over issues of race and policing this summer. Officers had abandoned the police station there for weeks before retaking it in late July amid escalating violence, including deadly shootings. Durkan said at the time that she had been forced to act because of the lawlessness.
Days later, federal Homeland Security officials sent tactical agents to the city. Durkan protested that their arrival would potentially exacerbate tensions between residents and local officials.
Trump has called the people who lived in the zone “domestic terrorists” and warned that Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington needed to regain control of the area. “If you don’t do it, I will,” the president wrote on Twitter. “This is not a game.”
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