Washington, June 5 (RHC)-- The Washington, D.C., chapter of Black Lives Matter and a group of protesters have sued President Trump, Attorney General William Barr and other top officials for violently clearing out peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square outside the White House so the president could have a photo op on Monday. 

On Thursday, Barr defended the administration’s actions and blamed extremist groups for instigating violence over the past week.

Attorney General William Barr: “We have evidence that antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.”

While Barr singled out the anti-fascist movement known as antifa, he provided no evidence of wrongdoing by anti-fascist activists. This comes as The Nation magazine has obtained an internal FBI document that shows the agency had “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” at protests in Washington last Sunday.  But the document did cite the presence of “far-right provocateurs.”