Minnesota officials said in a Saturday news conference that white nationalists and people from outside the state are fueling the violence in Minneapolis.
The Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, John Harrington said:
As we begun making arrests, we have begun analyzing the data of who we have arrested and begun actually doing what you would think almost very similar to our COVID. It’s contact tracing. Who are they associated with? Who — what platforms are they advocating for? And we have seen things like white supremacist organizers who have posted things on platforms about coming to Minnesota. We are checking to see do the folks that we have made arrests on and that we have information, are they connected to those we have seen flyers about protests where folks have talked about they’re going to get their loot on tonight and we’re checking to see, are they part of an organized criminal organization? And if so, what is that organization and how is that — how are they organized?
We have been working with both our state, our county, our local and our federal partners to start looking around, and is this organized crime? Is this an organized cell of terror? Where are the — where do these folks — where’s the linkage is what we’re doing and so we are in the process right now of building that information network, building that Intel effort so that we can link these folks together, figure out what the organizations that have created this and then understand how do we go after them legally? That is absolutely part and parcel of our mission. We are in fact public safety and we recognize that there are legal issues that are involved here but we are not going to tolerate the violence and the destruction that they’re using as a cover for the other illegal activity.
Video of Harrington:
Minnesota public safety commissioner says white nationalists are organizing and coming to the state for violence and destruction. In other words, white supremacists are following Trump's lead. pic.twitter.com/nKXHXnzSsb
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 30, 2020
Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said, “In Saint Paul last night and across our twin cities a curfew went into effect. Because we had a relative stillness in St. Paul we didn’t make an enormous number of arrests, but every single person we arrested last night I’m told was from out of state. What we are seeing right now is a group of people who are not from here.”
Video of Carter:
St. Paul Mayor says every single person who was arrested Friday night was from out of state. pic.twitter.com/vrFv4D7Wxy
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) May 30, 2020
The white nationalists are following Trump’s lead. Trump sent out tweets glorifying violence against the protesters, and his racist supporters have taken up the campaign that the President advocated for. The white nationalists, Trump, and the Russians all want to divide and weaken the United States to empower themselves.
It is the tyranny of the fringe right-wing minority who sees their Putin fueled grasp on power slipping away.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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