Barr says there's a 'witches' brew' of extremist groups trying to disrupt protests
Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday that there is a “witches’ brew” of different extremist organizations trying to disrupt protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Video Transcript
- Yesterday, the department charged three members of the group-- or associated with the group-- Boogaloo, a far-right extremist group-- known as a far-right extremist group. Is it important, in your remarks and thoughts, to point out all the different groups that are involved in this type of violent activity?
WILLIAM BARR: Well, I do think it's important to point out the witch's brew that we have of extremist individuals and groups that are involved. And that's why, in my prepared statement, I specifically said, in addition to Antifa and other extremist groups like Antifa, there were a variety of groups and people of a variety of ideological persuasions. So I did make that point.
The-- you know, I'm not going to get too specific. But the intelligence being collected by our US attorney's office, particularly integrated by the FBI from multiple different sources, is building up. There are some specific cases against individuals-- some Antifa-related. A lot of the extremists are involved in egging on violence and participating in violence, providing the means of violence. And, you know, we are pursuing those cases.
At the same time, there's a lot of-- I would also add, there's a lot of disinformation out there-- people posing as different-- as members of the different groups. So you sometimes have to dig a little deeper to determine exactly what's going on.
And there are some groups that don't have a particular ideology other than anarchy. There are some groups that want to bring about a civil war-- the Boogaloo group that has been on the margin of this as well, trying to exacerbate the violence. So we are dealing with, as I say, a witch's brew of a lot of different extremist organizations.
