D.C. mayor calls in National Guard before protests; Miami Proud Boys leader is arrested
Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.
Trump’s supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.
A pro-Trump rally in December ended in violence as hundreds of
Trump supporters, wearing the signature black and yellow of the Proud Boys faction, sought out confrontations with activists attempting to bar them from Black Lives Matter Plaza, an area near the White
House.
On Monday, Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, 36, after he arrived in Washington ahead of this week’s protests. Tarrio. who is based in Miami, was accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington during the December protests.
A warrant had been issued for Tarrio’s arrest for destruction of property, police said. He was also facing a weapons charges after officers found him with two high-capacity firearm magazines when he was arrested, a police spokesman said.
Trump has repeatedly encouraged this week’s protests and hinted that he may get personally involved. Over the weekend, he retweeted a promotion for the rally with the message, “I will be there. Historic Day!”
At a November rally, which drew about 15,000 people, Trump staged a limousine drive-by past cheering crowds in Freedom Plaza, on the city’s iconic Pennsylvania Avenue. And at the December rally, which drew smaller numbers but a larger contingent of Proud Boys, Trump’s helicopter flew low over cheering crowds on the National Mall.
The protests coincide with Wednesday’s congressional vote expected to certify the Electoral College results, which Trump continues to dispute,
Election officials from both political parties, governors in key battleground states and Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have said there was no widespread fraud in the election. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two rejected by the Supreme Court.
Now with downtown
D.C. businesses boarding up their windows, Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested a limited National
Guard deployment to help bolster the Metropolitan Police Department. During a press conference on Monday, Bowser asked that area residents stay away from downtown D.C., and avoid confrontations with anyone who is “looking for a fight.” But, she warned, “we will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city.”
Organizers plan to rally on Tuesday evening at Freedom Plaza and again all day Wednesday on the Ellipse, including a 1 p.m. Wednesday march to the Capitol. Expected attendees include high-level Trump supporters like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republican strategist Roger Stone, a longtime Trump devotee whose three-year prison sentence was commuted by Trump. Stone was convicted of repeatedly lying to Congress during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.