‘While we should aggressively protect the most vulnerable, policymakers should not bend to the hysteria manufactured by Leftists and the media…’
Andy Biggs/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., wants to know why the GOP governor of his home state is shutting down the “sturdiest demographics,” when he should be re-opening Arizona for business.
Children and young adults have proved the most resilient groups in the face of the Wuhan virus pandemic. But Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is treating them, and the businesses that serve them, as if they are just as vulnerable as elder adults.
According to Biggs, Ducey is bowing to media pressure.
“While we should aggressively protect the most vulnerable, policymakers should not bend to the hysteria manufactured by Leftists and the media,” Biggs wrote in a Townhall.com op-ed on Wednesday.
“It is time to acknowledge that the Democrat Leftists and their accomplices in the media are busy engendering hysteria in the American people over the COVID-19 outbreak,” he said.
Ducey ordered new business closures earlier this week just as the state economy was gaining momentum.
Like most states, all “non-essential” businesses were shut down for months due to Wuhan virus-related concerns. Unemployment soared as a result.
The Arizona economy came roaring back once mandatory closures and stay-at-home orders were lifted, but Ducey’s new order threatens to undermine the recovery.
Worse, the order is based on politics rather than data, he asserted.
“There is a plethora of data that’s available and when taken in context undercuts the broad sweep of the Governor’s recent edict,” Biggs said. “The Governor should rescind his recent order and get Arizonans back to work, school, and play.”
According to the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the two demographic groups that are least likely to suffer harm from the Wuhan virus are children, teenagers and young adults ages 0-20, and adults ages 21-44.
But that’s exactly who Ducey targeted in his new order which closes schools, bars, restaurants, gyms, water parks and even river tubing.
“Those over the age of 65 are clearly the most susceptible to dying at the hands of the virus,” said Biggs. “Children need to be in school.”
It was ‘very clear that FBI and State Department were both consulting each other and discussing the whole issue of engagement with us and our investigation…’
Christopher Steele / IMAGE: Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump has joked in the past that the State Department should be called the “Deep State” Department.
Recent testimony in a British court from notorious dossier author Christopher Steele may help explain why.
The former British spy has been able to duck U.S. subpoenas that would compel him to explain how he came to be at the center of the scandal, funded by the Democratic National Committee on behalf of Hillary Clinton, to smear then-candidate Donald Trump with false and salacious innuendo about foreign election-meddling.
Those initial claims, which were rooted in a Russian disinformation campaign against Trump, later gave way to a concerted effort by partisan, anti-Trump US intelligence operatives to undermine his presidency.
Steele, however, was forced to give testimony in a related defamation lawsuit brought by three Russian oligarchs implicated by the Steele Dossier in funneling “illicit cash” to Russian President Vladimir Putin when he was the mayor of St. Petersburg, the Epoch Times reported.
In the course of his testimony on March 18—the transcripts of which the Epoch Times recently obtained—Steele was surprised to discover the two branches working closely together on the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” sting operation.
When he met with a high-level State official, Kathy Kavalec, a month before the US election, it was “very clear that FBI and State Department were both consulting each other and discussing the whole issue of engagement with us and our investigation,” Steele testified.
Kavalec already was aware of the information contained in the reports he had surreptitiously submitted to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe using the back-door channel of husband-and-wife duo Bruce and Nellie Ohr.
Bruce Ohr, an assistant deputy attorney general, answered directly to Sally Yates, who would later represent the Justice Department in White House discussions about setting a perjury trap for incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Yates ultimately was fired early in the Trump administration for insubordination after refusing to defend in court the president’s travel restrictions on terrorist-harboring nations.
Nellie Ohr, meanwhile, was a colleague of Steele’s at the research firm Fusion GPS, where both were being paid to generate intelligence reports on Russia that could be used for opposition research by the Clinton campaign.
Steele testified that in a meeting with Kavalec at the State Department, she brought up the question of the three Russian businessmen, all of whom were linked to Alfa Bank.
“My understanding was that Kathy Kavalec, who raised I think the Alfa issue with us in this meeting in October, had been closely coordinating with the FBI and the FBI knew that we were having the meeting and so on and so forth and that they were jointly working on this material,” Steele said.
In fact, he said, it was the FBI who had instructed him to meet with Kavalec in the first place.
Steele also implicated two other known players in the conspiracy: Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who both were deeply involved in the administration’s Russia policy—and who were very interested in knowing about information Steele may have pertaining to the election.
Former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tells that Christopher Steele, author of the Russia dossier, shared similar information with the State Department: pic.twitter.com/4QS32hAlQq
Steele’s testimony confirmed the links, which had been widely speculated upon, with previous reports suggesting that Nuland had been the one to vouch for Steele with the FBI as it was vetting his credibility.
Some have also speculated that the State Department may have been working behind the scenes to plant the disinformation, perhaps fearing that a Trump detente with Russia could undermine crucial policy in the region.
Many of those concerns would later air in the testimony of State officials during Trump’s impeachment hearing over a phone call with the Ukrainian president, whose country was at war with Russia.
The March interrogation by the Queen’s Bench seemed likewise to be directed at establishing Steele’s credibility—or lack thereof—by noting his desperation to maximize the spread of the dirt he claimed to have on Trump.
Steele allegedly sought the State Department meetings after becoming frustrated by the FBI’s perceived inaction.
Despite the fact that the FBI had requested, likely due to the sensitive nature of the claims and the potential impact on the election, to be the sole recipient of Steele’s reports, he claimed he was under the impression that he could speak in general terms with other departments and that it would be inappropriate to turn down a meeting with a high-ranking official such as Nuland.
Eventually, the FBI made the decision to run with Steele’s information despite the clear-cut reservations about its sourcing and motives.
They used the now-debunked claims in the report to apply for and renew warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials, and the dossier was later leaked to media sources, who published it shortly before Trump’s inauguration as a last-ditch effort to block him from assuming power.
A criminal investigation into the involvement of FBI and other top officials, being led in the Justice Department by special prosecutor John Durham, is expected to wrap in the near future.
‘ I can only photograph what celebrates God’s creation and design for the world…’
Chris Herring / PHOTO: Alliance Defending Freedom
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A Virginia wedding photographer filed a lawsuit against the state after it passed a new anti-discrimination law that would force him to promote same-sex marriage against his religious beliefs.
The photographer, Chris Herring, argued that the Virginia Values Act creates an “impossible choice” for Christian Virginians: “violate the law and risk bankruptcy, promote views against his faith, or close down,” said Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative law firm representing Herring.
“And this was exactly what Virginia officials wanted for those who hold Chris’ religious beliefs about marriage,” the lawsuit states. “Legislators who passed Virginia’s law called views like Chris’ ‘bigotry’ and sought to punish them with ‘unlimited punitive damages’ to remove them from the public square.”
The Virginia Values Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, but Herring argued in his lawsuit that government officials could easily use the law to accuse him and other Christians of discrimination.
Such accusations would be unfair, since Herring gladly serves LGBT clients for brand and adventure shoots, the lawsuit states. But he will not photograph same-sex weddings—not because he is discriminatory, but because his beliefs prevent him from doing so.
“Because of my faith, I can only photograph consistent with who I am and what I believe. I can only photograph what celebrates God’s creation and design for the world,” Herring said in a statement. “I won’t photograph ceremonies that contradict God’s design for marriage as something between one man and one woman.”
Herring would also refuse to “promote drug tourism” or “photograph a red-light district” because of his religious beliefs, he said.
“I happily work with and serve all customers, but I can’t and won’t let the state force me to express messages that contradict my beliefs,” he said.
‘The only terrorists are the cowards who shot to kill a beautiful young man and blamed him for it…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) When it comes to bashing police, Rep. Rashida Tlaib doesn’t let the facts get in the way of her angry activism.
She also doesn’t limit her support of bad actors to American criminals.
The socialist Michigan Democrat recently tweeted her support for a Palestinian terrorist who rammed his car into an Israeli police checkpoint and in an attempt to kill several officers.
The disturbing incident was caught on a security camera on June 23. It shows a civilian car in line to pass the officers only for the driver to accelerate and aim for officers at the last moment.
One border officer was rushed to the hospital. The driver, Ahmad Erekat, 27, was killed by police.
Erekat was later identified as the nephew of Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, an anti-Semitic terror organization once headed by Yasser Arafat.
But despite the open-and-shut nature of the attack, Tlaib retweeted four statements from accounts accusing Israeli law enforcement of unjustly killing the driver.
The first was from Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and assistant professor at Rutgers University.
“You lie. You kill. You lie. This is my baby cousin. He was on his way to pick up his baby sister from the salon for her wedding tonight. He was 27 & full of life. His name is Ahmed. The only terrorists are the cowards who shot to kill a beautiful young man and blamed him for it,” Erakat wrote.
Tlaib retweeted Erakat again when she wrote that Israelis “left him to bleed out for 1.5 hours,” and that “Israeli cowards claim it was a car ramming incident.”
The next retweet was from an account that said, “We send our love and support to the Erakat family for the tragic murder of their son at the hands of Israeli police.”
‘While the Department respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated…’
National Guard troops protect the Lincoln Memorial during a recent protest. / IMAGE: James Hartnett via Reuters / YouTube
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) After a month of nationwide chaos, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is finally putting its foot down to protect America’s historic monuments, memorials and statues.
Lawless mobs have swept through mostly Democrat-controlled cities and desecrated bipartisan symbols of American heritage with seeming impunity.
Few, if any, city or state elected leaders have shown the courage to enforce the rule of law, thereby forcing the Trump administration to take action.
“DHS is answering the President’s call to use our law enforcement personnel across the country to protect our historic landmarks,” DHS Acting Secretary Chad F. Wolf said on Wednesday.
“We won’t stand idly by while violent anarchists and rioters seek not only to vandalize and destroy the symbols of our nation, but to disrupt law and order and sow chaos in our communities,” said Wolf.
The task force is the result of a June 26 executive order, titled, “Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Activity.”
It will work with the department’s vast law enforcement agency assets and personnel to protect historic property across the country, according to a statement.
DHS’s Office of Operations Coordination will also partner closely with the departments of Justice and Interior to establish information and intelligence sharing.
Wolf said the task force will begin by conducting assessments of potential civil unrest and will then allocate DHS resources to protect historic monuments and statues, as well as innocent communities where violent mobs have been allowed to sow terror without consequences.
The announcement sets up a potential showdown with rioters and left-wing mobs, Wolf acknowledged, especially ahead Independence Day.
“As we approach the July 4th holiday, I have directed the deployment and pre-positioning of Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT) across the country to respond to potential threats to facilities and property,” he said.
“While the Department respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated.”
‘It serves no apparent purpose beyond intimidation…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Despite a formal apology, protesters in St. Louis were demanding the resignation of Democrat Mayor Lyda Krewson after she broadcast the names of at least 10 Black Lives Matter activists who wrote to her calling for defunding the city’s police department.
I’d like to apologize for identifying individuals who presented letters to me at City Hall today. This was during one of my Facebook updates as I was answering routine questions. Never did I intend to harm anyone or cause distress. The update is removed and again, I apologize.
Gathered outside of her home in a private, gated neighborhood this weekend, at least 500 people chanted, “Resign, Lyda! Take the cops with you!”
Krewson published the names during a Facebook Live briefing on Friday but removed the post quickly after facing backlash.
In the video, she was asked about meeting with protesters outside City Hall. In response, Krewson read letters submitted to her by protesters to prove that she is “listening” to their concerns.
Although Krewson deleted the Facebook Live video, she did note that the letters sent to her by activists are considered public records. She clarified that she had not meant to “harm anyone or cause distress.”
“It is shocking and misguided for Mayor Lyda Krewson of St. Louis, to broadcast the addresses of those who dare to express a different viewpoint on an issue of public concern,” the ACLU said in a statement.
“It serves no apparent purpose beyond intimidation,” the statement continued. “We are stronger when we foster open dialogue. The chilling of debate should bother everyone, no matter whether they agree or disagree with the mayor on this particular issue.”
Krewson’s office made it clear that she will not be stepping down. She “acknowledged he mistake and there was absolutely no malicious intent,” said the mayor’s communications director, Jacob Long.
Krewson was elected in 2017 as St. Louis’s first female mayor, in large part because she pledged to reduce crime and improve poor neighborhoods.
This pledge stemmed from the horrific murder of her husband, Jeff, who was slain in 1995 by a parolee in a carjacking attempt. She and her two young children were in the car’s back seat when James Wade, 21, and an 18-year-old accomplice approached Jeff Krewson and shot him in the neck when he tried to drive away.
‘When the totality of his tenure is considered, Lincoln is widely acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) University of Wisconsin students are demanding that the campus’s statue of Abraham Lincoln be removed, arguing that Lincoln’s fight against slavery doesn’t mean he was “pro-black.”
.@UWMadison Chancellor @beckyblank‘s statement on call to remove Pres. Lincoln statue on campus. She says the university believes “deeply in justice and equity for all people” & says they are in talks for Ho-Chunk land acknowledgement, but they think the statue should stay. pic.twitter.com/8vwXZTDSCX
The statue of Lincoln has sat atop the university’s Bascom Hill for more than a century and is often used as a backdrop for graduate photos, according to WISC-TV. But some members of the university’s Black Student Union claimed last week that the statue fails to mention Lincoln’s past comments on racial equality.
“He was also very publicly anti-black,” BSU president Nalah McWhorter said.
“Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-black,” McWhorter continued. “He said a lot in his presidential campaigns. His fourth presidential campaign speech, he said that he believes there should be an inferior and superior, and he believes white people should be the superior race.”
Lincoln’s opinion on racial equality evolved throughout his political career, and it was radically different by the time he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. His was a “complex” legacy, said the school’s chancellor, Becky Blank.
“Like those of all presidents, Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed,” she said in response to students’ demands.
A statue of Abraham Lincoln in front of Bascom Hall at the University of Madison-Wisconsin / IMAGE: Channel 3000 News 3 Now via YouTube
“However, when the totality of his tenure is considered, Lincoln is widely acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents, having issued the Emancipation Proclamation, persuaded Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment ending slavery and preserved the Union during the Civil War,” she added.
As of right now, the school will not support efforts to remove Lincoln’s statue on campus, according to Blank’s statement.
Students then accused the University of Wisconsin of siding with a “breathless, lifeless statue” over its black students.
“For them to want to protect [Lincoln’s] statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50 to 60 years—it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus,” McWhorter said.
‘When there’s that confrontation at the front door, it doesn’t turn out very well…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A video of a woman’s brief, profanity laced tirade at a Dallas-area Fiesta Market went viral, garnering more than 23 million views from its original Twitter source as of Tuesday afternoon.
Although the recent grocery-store exchange offered little in the way of context, the situation seemed all too familiar.
Many viewers mocked the unidentified woman as the latest “Karen,” a meme-based pop-culture term largely applied to middle-age, white females who are stereotyped as being quick to complain and demand to “speak to the manager.”
In the context of racial disputes, more recent iterations have applied the term to any beneficiaries of so-called white-privilege for insisting that others respect the same set of social mores.
The inherently sexist, ageist and even racist origins of the “Karen” pejorative have also led some to label it an offensive slur.
But offensive or not, the term is likely to see wider use as tensions simmer in the highly politicized mask debate.
Selective Memory
After weeks of shrugging off the previous virus hysteria—allowing rioters to ransack American cities with impunity, despite zero social distancing—leftist media once again to sprang into action over President Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in Tulsa two weekends ago.
Rioters celebrate acts of destruction during nationwide protests last week triggered by the police killing of George Floyd. / IMAGE: CBS Chicago via YouTube
The bad-faith policies, particularly in blue-leaning jurisdictions during the authoritarian lock-downs and subsequent riots, have now retrenched the earlier resistance from COVID-skeptical conservatives, who point out the blatant political motives.
In response, many state and local leaders have doubled down by replacing the loosely enforced quarantines with new demands for face coverings, even though the science behind them has been vastly inconsistent and contradictory.
Most are leaving it to businesses—desperate to reopen under any circumstances—to do the policing of the new policies, which has put the establishments themselves in a delicate and uncomfortable situation.
“When there’s that confrontation at the front door, it doesn’t turn out very well,” said Gary Huddleston, a grocery industry consultant and spokesperson for the Texas Retailers Association, according to Dallas–Fort Worth’s CBS 11.
Of course, some virtue-signaling establishments have relished the new decrees as an opportunity to shift the focus back on what they deemed to be right-wing social deviancy and paint themselves, once more, as the sensible and responsible guardians of public health.
Ignoring the blaring hypocrisy over the recent—and in many cases, ongoing—Black Lives Matter-led protests, some have falsely suggested that the recent spike was pure coincidence, resulting instead from a false sense of security.
“When everything reopened, I think everyone was like ‘well, coronavirus doesn’t exist anymore’ because everything’s opening, when in fact, that’s not the case,” claimed Larissa Spies, a mask-wearing customer interviewed by CBS 11.
“People just need to be smarter about what they’re doing,” she added.
But paired with lingering indignation about the riots and their deleterious cultural impact, this audaciously condescending finger-wagging may, in fact, have a lot to do with the outrage that is now boiling over onto hapless store employees.
Moreover, the role that reckless protesters played in the recent spike is but one of many problematic facts about the pandemic that the Left now seems eager dismiss.
Even greater doubts now linger as to whether the facts about the virus itself are being honestly reported.
Of those about 10 percent come back positive—even though most tests require that a person already be demonstrating symptoms and/or have come into contact with a positive case.
While evidence suggests that the mortality rate remains largely stable, as testing continues to increase virus alarmists have, nonetheless, begun hyping a massive spike in the coronavirus case numbers.
As of June 30, the US rate of 4.87% fatalities—the ratio of confirmed deaths to confirmed cases—was slightly below the global average of 4.96.
Meanwhile, the ratio of recoveries to deaths in “closed” cases over time has steadily increased from a low of 77% recoveries in early April to 91% recoveries in late June, which may suggest that treatment methods are improving.
Yet, media reports have emphasized misleading figures, such as the overall case count, new case rate (a function of increased testing) and comparative trends in individual states.
That means that since states with massive outbreaks—including New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey—have begun to level off, dishonest news outlets are declaring them as success stories and falsely painting those that have staved off major outbreaks as the failures.
In particular, upticks in the numbers of new cases from red-leaning states that are vocally resistant to authoritarian lock-downs have garnered disproportionate coverage.
Largely ignored by the coverage is that major cities remain the virus’s biggest hotspots with only a few exceptions, such as parts of Arizona where the spread among predominantly Native American populations may suggest that underlying genetic and health issues are creating greater risk factors.
Also significant is that at third of the cases in the US with available demographic information (roughly half the total number of cases) is those of Latino and Hispanic origin, while around 20 percent are black.
The disproportionate impact on those communities—once a highly touted figure in the press amid claims that the disease itself was “racist”—have been considerably less emphasized as the new media narrative emerges.
Moreover, at least half of the total number of COVID-related deaths have come from nursing homes.
All of these factors belie the paranoid notion promulgated by the Left that it is asymptomatic, silent spreaders to blame.
In reality, the only “viral” threat from most suburban “Karens” is the one spread via social media, and the only thing leftist mask decrees help to suppress is Americans’ constitutional rights.
‘You won’t see [DeSantis] here. Why? Because he’s got nothing to say…’
Chris Cuomo / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) CNN’s Chris Cuomo mocked Ron DeSantis for reopening Florida “too soon” on Monday, accusing the governor of triggering a surge of coronavirus cases in his state.
But Cuomo has nothing but praise for his older brother, Andrew, the New York governor whose handling of the pandemic is statistically much worse than DeSantis’s — or any other governor’s for that matter.
“He made Trump happy, Governor DeSantis did, and now more Floridians than they can count accurately appear to be sick,” Cuomo said.
Playing a clip from May of DeSantis’s rant about the mainstream media’s coverage of his coronavirus policies, Cuomo mimicked the Florida governor’s gestures and then snarked, “What now? Not going to hear him here. You won’t see him here. Why? Because he’s got nothing to say.”
COVID-19 cases are reappearing quickly in Florida, and DeSantis admitted this week that it’s been difficult to contain the virus when the tourist season is at its height. However, cellphone data analyzed by the Miami Herald shows that Floridians were leaving their homes frequently before DeSantis even initiated reopenings on May 4.
But according to Cuomo, DeSantis is to blame, although the CNN anchor was unwilling to apply that same level of scrutiny to his brother, whose disastrous policies contributed to New York’s coronavirus outbreak — especially in the state’s nursing homes.
More than half of all coronavirus-related deaths have occurred in New York’s nursing homes, according to the New York Times. Gov. Cuomo passed a policy in March forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive patients, essentially turning long-term care facilities into breeding grounds. As a result, more than 6,000 elderly, vulnerable New Yorkers have died from COVID-19 within the state’s nursing homes.
Chris Cuomo failed to mention this when he interviewed his big brother last week. Instead, he praised him as the “best politician” in the country, claiming that he “stepped up in an unusual way” to fill the “vacuum of power on a federal level.” Chris Cuomo later admitted that his comments weren’t “objective,” but he refused to apologize.
“Not objective but true, the facts tell the story,” Chris Cuomo said a follow-up statement on Twitter. “NY had & has its struggles but they’re doing way better than what we see elsewhere & no way that happens without the Luv Guv dishing the real 24/7.”
New York has had more positive cases, more deaths, and more hospitalizations than any other state, including Florida. Andrew Cuomo has tried to argue that these numbers were inevitable, but multiple health experts have said that his slow response at the start of the virus contributed to its rapid spread.
‘We were told that we would be killed, our home burned, and our dog killed…’
Armed homeowners standing in front their house in St. Louis/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The St. Louis couple who confronted violent protesters in the driveway of their home are now being investigated for potential “unlawful use of a weapon.”
The couple, identified as personal injury lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey, stood outside their mansion on Monday and pointed guns at angry protesters who had broken into the gated community and marched toward the mayor’s home to demand her resignation. Mark McCloskey said he and his wife went out to the driveway after the mob had illegally burst through the fence, and that they were immediately threatened.
“A mob of at least 100 [protesters] smashed through the historic wrought-iron gates of Portland Place, destroying them, rushed towards my home where my family was having dinner outside, and put us in fear of our lives,” Mark McCloskey told KMOV-TV. “This is all private property. There are no public sidewalks or public streets. We were told that we would be killed, our home burned, and our dog killed. We were all alone facing an angry mob.”
A video of the encounter proves that the McCloskey’s residence was in fact in a private community:
In this livestream footage you can clearly see the STL black lives matter mob entered through the gate to a private community. This was not a public sidewalk. https://t.co/NeKHgTBWEupic.twitter.com/UdYq3pGtlb
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 29, 2020
But St. Louis prosecutor Kimberly Gardner said she is determined to get to the bottom of the incident, accusing the McCloskeys of meeting “peaceful protesters” with “guns and a violent assault.”
Under Missouri’s “Castle Doctrine,” residents are allowed to use force against an intruder on their property.
And because protesters broke into a private neighborhood and gathered on a gated road, the law supports the McCloskey’s actions, said the couple’s lawyer, Albert Watkins.
“Both Mr. and Mrs. McCloskey acted lawfully on their property which sits on a private gated lane in the City of St. Louis,” Watkins said in a statement. “Their actions were borne solely of fear and apprehension, the genesis of which was not race-related. In fact, the agitators responsible for the trepidation were white.”
Moreover, the McCloskeys made it clear on Tuesday that they support the Black Lives Matter movement. It wasn’t the protest they had a problem with, he said, but the way in which protesters went about it.
“The peaceful protesters were not the subject of scorn or disdain by the McCloskeys,” Watkins said. “To the contrary, they were expecting and supportive of the message of the protesters.”
