Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Monday morning that the Department of Justice will not pursue an investigation into the funding behind the violent agitators who attacked RNC attendees after the Republican National Convention last summer.
Senator Paul, his wife, and many other Republicans were terrorized by a “crazed mob” on the streets of D.C. upon exiting the White House grounds following President Trump’s RNC acceptance speech on the night of August 27.
“The DC U.S. Attorney today confirmed to me that they will not pursue an investigation of who is funding the thugs who attacked my wife and me and sent a DC police officer to the hospital,” Paul tweeted.
The DC U.S. Attorney today confirmed to me that they will not pursue an investigation of who is funding the thugs who attacked my wife and me and sent a DC police officer to the hospital. https://t.co/abpESDJ4nx
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 23, 2020
Michael R. Sherwin is the Acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Sherwin is a career prosecutor from Florida who had previously served as the principal assistant US attorney in the DC office.
Paul appeared on Fox and Friends the morning after the riot to describe the harrowing ordeal that he, his wife, and two female friends experienced that night. The Kentucky senator said he believed if the police had not been there to escort them back to their hotel, they could have been killed.
“I truly believe this with every fiber of my being, had they gotten at us they would have gotten us to the ground, we might not have been killed, might just have been injured by being kicked in the head, or kicked in the stomach until we were senseless,” he told host Steve Doocy.
In 2017, Paul suffered six broken ribs, including three displaced fractures, and an injured lung after his crazed leftist neighbor attacked him. The beating also caused fluid and blood around his lungs, and pneumonia. In August of 2019, part of his damaged lung had to be surgically removed.
“It was horrific,” the Republican senator told Doocy, explaining that it was impossible to get to his hotel across the street because it was being blocked by the unhinged mob of agitators.
Paul said because of the ongoing left-wing demonstrations, Republicans were not safe to walk the streets in Washington D.C., and called on the FBI to make arrests to investigate potential interstate crimes.
“My feeling is that there’s interstate criminal traffic being paid for across state lines, but you won’t know it unless you arrest them,” he said. “I promise you that at least some of the members of the people who attacked us were not from D.C., they flew here on a plane, they’ve all got fresh new clothes, and they were paid to be here.”
Paul stressed that the organizers of the mayhem had to be investigated to get to the bottom of it.
“It is a crime to do that and it needs to be traced. The FBI needs to investigate,” he said, adding that “they were inciting a riot and they would have killed us had the police not been there.
“Something’s going on here and it’s much bigger than people think,” Paul said at the time.
The U.S. attorney’s refusal to act is at odds with public statements made by Attorney General Bill Barr and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf earlier this year.
“There appear to be sources of funding, and we are looking into the sources of funding,” Barr told Fox News’ host Bret Baier back in June. “And, you know, there is clearly some high degree of organization involved at some of these events and and coordinated tactics that we’re seeing. And we’re looking into that as well. And some of it relates to an Antifa. Some of it relates to groups that act very much like Antifa. As I said, there’s a witches’ brew of extremist groups that are trying to exploit this situation on all sides.”
DHS Sec. Chad Wolf told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in late August that he had “personally” spoken with Attorney General William Barr about the probe.
Wolf said the DOJ has been “targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, [and] the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country.”
“We are making sure that the investigations that we are involved in, we are getting that information over to the FBI, to those criminal investigators that are doing their job” he said. “We have seen groups and individuals move from Portland to other parts of the country.”
Wolf added that the violent agitators “are organized.”
“We have seen similar tactics being used from Portland and other cities across the country as well,” he said.
In a statement on Sept. 1, DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec said: “We are investigating coordinated, criminal activity—not First Amendment activity—and violence related to riots, destruction of federal property and violence against law enforcement officers.”
#Protests2020 From DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec, “We are investigating coordinated, criminal activity – not First Amendment activity – and violence related to riots, destruction of federal property and violence against law enforcement officers” @CBSNews @ClareHymes22
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) September 1, 2020
Two and a half months later, it appears that the DOJ’s “investigation” into “coordinated, criminal activity” was half-hearted at best, and went nowhere.