WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) – Attorney General William Barr said that the US Secret Service told Donald Trump to go to a secure part of the White House as large protests unfolded outside, contradicting the president’s account of what happened.
“Things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended that the president go down to the bunker,” Mr Barr said on Monday (June 8) evening in an interview on Fox News. “We can’t have that in our country.”
The opposing versions of what occurred centre on the night of May 31, as demonstrations over the death of George Floyd had spread to the capital.
Mr Trump last week denied going to the bunker for his safety.
“Well, that was a false report,” Trump said on Wednesday on Brian Kilmeade’s Fox News Radio show. “I was there for a tiny, little short period of time. It was much more for an inspection.”
On the previous Friday night, demonstrators skirmished with the US Secret Service in Lafayette Square outside the White House. Mr Floyd, an African-American Minneapolis man, had died in police custody on May 25.
The clashes occurred alongside an outer ring of temporary fencing set up along the edge of the park, leading to six arrests and “multiple” injuries among the agency’s personnel, the Secret Service said.
