USA to designate ANTIFA as a terrorist organization

Trump announced that the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.

US President Donald Trump held ANTIFA and other “radical groups” responsible for the consequences of the increasingly ongoing protests following the murder of 46-year-old George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis last week. Floyd died in police custody on Monday after the white officer handcuffed him before kneeling on his neck, despite Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe. Four officers, including Chauvin, were fired the next day.

In a series of Twitter posts, Trump congratulated “our National Guard for the great job they did immediately upon arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota”.

Trump wrote: “The ANTIFA led anarchists, among others, were shut down quickly. Should have been done by Mayor on first night and there would have been no trouble!”

Targeting with his remarks the Democrat Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, Trump argued that the National Guard has been released in Minneapolis to do the job that the Democrat Mayor couldn’t do. According to the US President, this should have been done two days ago so “there would not have been damage and Police Headquarters would not have been taken over and ruined”.

In the face of growing protests, the police officer who killed Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter and jailed.

Based on law enforcement review of body-cam video, state charging documents allege that the now former Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for a total of nearly nine minutes, including two minutes and 43 seconds after Floyd became non-responsive.

Floyd’s family released a statement calling the arrest a “welcome but overdue step on the road to justice” and added that members “expected a first-degree murder charge”, which they still demand.

“The pain that the black community feels over this murder and what it reflects about the treatment of black people in America is raw and spilling out on to streets across [the country],” the statement read.

In the meantime, Attorney General William P. Barr also accused “violent radical” groups of “hijacking the voices of peaceful and legitimate protests with the rioting that is occurring in many of our cities around the country”.

Barr claimed that “the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism” threatening that “they will be treated accordingly.”

Barr argued that groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent, and extremist agenda.

He stated that; “To identify criminal organizers and instigators, and to coordinate federal resources with our state and local partners, federal law enforcement is using our existing network of 56 regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF).”