‘We came right up to the edge.’ Military says active duty forces almost sent into DC
The almost 5,000 National Guard forces who were deployed to respond to protests in the nation’s capital following the death of George Floyd will be heading home, after their presence possibly avoided a constitutional crisis by preventing the ordering of active duty troops to police the District of Columbia.
“I have just given an order for our National Guard to start the process of withdrawing from Washington, D.C., now that everything is under perfect control,” President Donald Trump wrote in a tweet. “They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed. Far fewer protesters showed up last night than anticipated!”
Members of the National Guard first began arriving in the District of Columbia a week ago as rioters on May 31 set fire to cars, vandalized businesses and national monuments, and set a fire in the basement of St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House. That night members of the Guard were hit with bricks, injuring five service members, Maj. Gen. William Walker, Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard, said.
“On that night, my soldiers and airmen were defending the nation. We were defending the capital. And we were the last line of defense,” he said, referring to May 31. “So the United States Park Police, the United States Secret Service were in front of District of Columbia Guardsmen. And on a couple of occasions, they [rioters] penetrated the line, and our Guardsmen, Army and air, held the line and kept people from advancing on the White House proper.”
When peaceful protesters, demonstrating over the death of Floyd in police custody, returned near that church in Lafayette Square on Monday evening, it was the use of force against them that set off the greatest challenge to Trump’s relationship with the military during his presidency. That included Defense Secretary Mark Esper breaking with the president on the use of active duty military to police the protests.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Walker said in a call with reporters Sunday that the thousands of Guard forces that quickly arrived in the district last week enabled the military to keep active duty forces from being called in. It is against the law under Posse Comitatus to use federal military troops to conduct law enforcement activities on U.S. soil.
“We came right up to the edge of bringing active troops here,” McCarthy said.
Trump had threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed the use of federal troops — including about 700 members from the 82nd Airborne Division of Fort Bragg, N.C. — to enter the city and police the protesters, who were growing in number every day.
“You had the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Belvoir — that’s how close we were,” McCarthy said, crediting the quick contributions of Guard units from other states and also federal law enforcement, which added sufficient presence at the protests to hold off the White House from invoking the act.
“We postured them outside, on the other side of the river,” McCarthy said. “And they did not cross the river into the capital. They were on the outskirts because we didn’t want to do it.”
“We did everything we could to not cross that line,” he said.
McCarthy said they will first send home National Guard units from Mississippi and Florida because those forces are needed to respond to tropical storm Cristobal which is approaching in the Gulf of Mexico. The remainder of the National Guard forces will depart within 72 hours, he said.
Saturday marked the sixth peaceful day in a row of protests in the nation’s capital, something the National Guard and Army had said would be used as a barometer on whether to approve troops going home.
National Guard members — who had been photographed rows deep the nights before, cutting off access to national monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial and various downtown streets — took a “soft” approach, one National Guard official said, having a minimal presence on the streets where protesters marched and around the monuments. There were no arrests, the mayor said.
Trump’s message Sunday was his second tweet in less than a day on the crowd size of protesters in Washington. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said that Saturday’s demonstrations were the largest the city had yet seen over the course of a week of peaceful protests.
Bowser had demanded that federal forces leave the city and in a pointed message of support for the protesters renamed the area near St. John’s church “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had city workers paint in large yellow letters “Black Lives Matter” on a street leading to the White House.
Top military officials also disagreed with Trump’s threat to use military force against violence in the protests.
Both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley and Esper sent messages last week to the force about their duty to adhere to the Constitution.
“We all committed our lives to the idea that is America,” Milley wrote by hand at the end of a memo about the military’s defense of all Americans, and their constitutional right to protest. “We will stay true to that oath and the American people.”
“Every member of the U.S. military swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the values embedded within it,” Milley wrote in the June 2 note, the day after the peaceful protesters were ejected from Lafayette Square with National Guard support. “This document is founded on the essential principles that all men and women are born free and equal and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.”
Trump administration officials argue that, if the protests continue to swell, the president has the power to send federal troops into states under the authority of the Insurrection Act — even if governors object.
In an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Attorney General William Barr said that Trump would not need permission from state leaders to deploy troops, citing the Civil War as precedent for the federal government overriding governors in exceptional circumstances.
“Under the Insurrection Act, the president can use regular troops to suppress rioting,” Barr said. “The Confederacy in our country opposed the use of federal troops to restore order and suppress an insurrection. So the federal government sometimes doesn’t listen to governors in certain circumstances,” he said.
“It’s happened numerous times, and the answer to that is yes,” added Barr, when asked again whether the president had sole authority to deploy troops in U.S. states.
There are indications that the protests will continue. Al Sharpton, a longtime civil rights activist, said at a memorial for Floyd on Thursday that his family plans to lead a march on Washington in August.
Speaking with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Bowser pushed back against the president’s criticisms of her leadership, after he had called her an “incompetent” mayor whose initial approach to the protests allowed for riots and looting.
The troops may be leaving, but the images of Trump’s use of force against protesters remain, Bowser said.
“What Americans saw was federal police forces tear gassing peaceful Americans, and how they responded made clear to the president that Americans would exercise their First Amendment rights, and they would do it peacefully,” Bowser said, ”and what he actually did, as you saw for the remaining days, was turn out more people, and more people that were there for peaceful protests.”
This story was originally published June 7, 2020 at 8:59 AM with the headline "‘We came right up to the edge.’ Military says active duty forces almost sent into DC."
