(CNN) — Javier Milei has won Argentina’s presidential elections in provisional results, wrenching his country to the right with a bombastic anti-establishment campaign that drew comparisons to that of former US President Donald Trump – all against the backdrop of one of the world’s highest inflation rates.

His rival Sergio Massa conceded the run-off vote on Sunday evening in a brief speech even before official results were announced. “Milei is the president elected for the next 4 years,” said Massa, adding that he had already called Milei to congratulate him.

Provisional results so far show Milei with over 55% of votes (13,781,154) with more than 94% of votes counted, according to data from the country’s National Electoral Chamber, which has not yet declared an official winner.

Milei’s victory marks an extraordinary rise for the former TV pundit, who entered the race as a political outsider on a promise to “break up with the status quo” – exemplified by Sergio Massa.

His campaign promise to dollarize Argentina, if enacted, is expected to thrust the country into new territory: no country of Argentina’s size has previously turned over the reins of its own monetary policy to Washington decisionmakers.

Shortly after the results were announced, Milei was greeted by cheers and thunderous applause from his supporters as he took to the stage and gave a fiery speech, pledging to take the country into a new political era.

“Today we turn the page on our history and we return to the path that we should never have lost,” Milei said. “Today we retake the path that made this country great.”

Milei, a social conservative with ties to the American right, opposes abortion rights and has called climate change a “lie of socialism.” He has promised to slash government spending by closing Argentina’s ministries of culture, education, and diversity, and by eliminating public subsidies.

“Make Argentina great again!” Trump posted on his platform Truth Social Sunday, in reaction to Milei’s win. “I am very proud of you,” he wrote.

Similarities to Trump have not gone unnoticed in the United States as it prepares for its own presidential elections. Milei succeeded in attracting attention at home not only because of his political style – including wielding chainsaws and raging outbursts – but also because of the novelty of his positions and eagerness to upset the status quo.

Echoing the Trumpian slogan, ‘Drain the swamp’, Milei’s supporters shout “¡¡Qué se vayan todos!!” which translates as “May they all leave!” – an expression of fury at politicians from both sides of the spectrum. Argentina’s left is currently in government, following rule by the right from 2015 to 2019.

Outside of his controversial plan for dollarization, Milei’s political program includes slashing regulations on gun control and transferring authority over the penitentiary system from civilians to the military; both measures part of a tough-on-crime approach. He proposes using public funds to support families who choose to educate their children privately and even privatizing the health sector, which in Argentina has always been in public hands.

Several outspoken comments landed Milei in hot water, without deterring his most ardent supporters. He triggered an uproar when it appeared Milei was in favor of opening a market for organ transplants, although he later retracted his declarations. He was similarly forced to apologize after calling Pope Francis, who is from Argentina and is seen as an icon of progressive politics in South America, “an envoy of Satan” in 2017.

Milei’s unexpected political ascent will be closely scrutinized around the world as a potential sign of a resurgence of far-right populism in the region. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro endorsed Milei’s candidacy, while leftist leaders in the region – including current Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro – abandoned a tradition of non-intervention to back Massa in the election run-up.

Public opinion polls had shown the two candidates neck-and-neck in recent weeks.

The candidacy of Massa, a lifelong politician, came to represent Argentina’s political establishment over the course of the race against Milei. Inflation reached painful heights during his tenture as economy minister, at 142% year on year, but Massa argued that the current government’s actions were working to temper the pain – an argument that failed to convince voters exhausted by a cost-of-living crisis.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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Federal authorities investigating alleged sex trafficking by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz have secured the cooperation of the congressman’s ex-girlfriend, according to people familiar with the matter.

The woman, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is seen as a critical witness, as she has been linked to Gaetz as far back as the summer of 2017, a period of time that has emerged as a key window of scrutiny for investigators. She can also help investigators understand the relevance of hundreds of transactions they have obtained records of, including those involving alleged payments for sex, the sources said.

News of the woman’s willingness to talk, which has not been previously reported, comes just days after the Justice Department formally entered into a plea agreement with Joel Greenberg, a one-time close friend of Gaetz whose entanglement with young women first drew the congressman onto investigators’ radar.

CNN reported last week that investigators were pressing for the woman’s cooperation. The sources would not say whether she had reached a formal cooperation agreement.

Information from Greenberg in the lead-up to his plea agreement has already helped investigators further their scrutiny of the congressman. As he worked towards a plea deal with federal prosecutors in recent months, Greenberg told investigators that Gaetz and at least two other men had sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl, CNN has learned. Gaetz has repeatedly denied he ever had sex with a minor or paid for sex.

“Congressman Gaetz doesn’t seem to be named nor referenced in Mr. Greenberg’s plea,” said Gaetz spokesman Harlan Hill. “Congressman Gaetz has never had sex with a minor and has never paid for sex. Mr. Greenberg has now pleaded guilty to falsely accusing someone else of sex with a minor. That person was innocent. So is Congressman Gaetz.”

Justice Department spokesman Joshua Stueve declined to comment to CNN. The ex-girlfriend’s lawyer Timothy Jansen also declined to comment.

Greenberg plea agreement

That allegation by Greenberg, described to CNN by multiple people familiar with the matter, is referenced briefly in an 86-page plea agreement that a federal judge accepted on Monday and is now at the center of the ongoing investigation into Gaetz. But prosecutors did not include any names in the court filing.

According to the plea agreement, Greenberg had sex with the girl “at least seven times when she was a minor” and “introduced the Minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts with the Minor” in central Florida.

Greenberg’s cooperation on the subject is a primary reason that 27 of the 33 charges he had been facing were wiped away. The extent to which he backs it up will have an impact on his final prison sentence. But already, a Gaetz associate, one of the men accused by Greenberg, has denied the allegation in a meeting with federal prosecutors, the associate told CNN.

Gaetz and his representatives have attacked Greenberg’s credibility in recent days, pointing to the fact that Greenberg admitted in his plea agreement to falsely accusing someone of having sex with a minor.

“If the government is brave enough to call Joel Greenberg as a witness, [Marc] Mukasey and [Isabelle] Kirshner are champing at the bit to take him on,” a person close to Gaetz’s defense team said, referring to the congressman’s two high-profile attorneys.

“We’re ready for a fair fight on the facts and the law. Anywhere. Anytime. But the steady stream of leaks by anonymous sources undermines the integrity of this process. It is simply and unequivocally improper,” the attorneys said in a statement to CNN.

Asked earlier this week about Greenberg’s readiness to potentially testify against Gaetz, Fritz Scheller, Greenberg’s defense attorney, said, “Mr. Greenberg has pled guilty pursuant to a plea agreement and has certain requirements and obligations on him and he intends to honor that.”

As part of his plea agreement, Greenberg is required to cooperate fully with the federal government in other ongoing investigations and prosecutions.

Gaetz, who has not been charged with a crime, is also under investigation over allegations of prostitution and public corruption, CNN has reported. He has long denied having sex with the 17-year-old in public statements and interviews.

Gaetz associate meets with federal investigators

The Gaetz associate who met with the Justice Department earlier this month told CNN that investigators spent the bulk of the meeting asking questions about the congressmen and parties with young women, including the 17-year-old. Investigators appeared to be focused on encounters that took place in the summer of 2017, the associate said.

The associate, who was one of the men Greenberg told investigators had engaged in a sex act with the 17-year-old, denied to investigators that he had ever met the woman or had sexual contact with her in 2017, he told CNN. He also says he provided them with an independently administered polygraph exam that he had taken days before the meeting.

Details of the associate’s meeting with investigators and the polygraph exam were first reported by Politico.

He shared with CNN details of his contact with investigators on the condition his name not be used.

Investigators also briefly asked questions about possible influence peddling revolving around the medical marijuana industry and a 2020 Florida Senate race in which a third-party candidate ran as a spoiler, the associate added.

The associate said his meeting with investigators followed a December 2020 subpoena that requested communications and payments between him and Gaetz, Greenberg, and another man, from January 2016 to the present.

The subpoena indicated a grand jury was investigating allegations “involving commercial sex acts with adult and minor women, as well as obstruction of justice,” the associate said.

There are new signs of investigative activity too, after sources had recently told CNN the FBI was mostly done gathering evidence.

One person familiar with the matter said that federal investigators have sought information from new witnesses as recently as this month, including communications and payments from a group of men that included Gaetz and Greenberg.

Decisions on whether to charge Gaetz have yet to be made and will fall to prosecutors in the public integrity section of the Justice Department. That decision is likely to take some time, CNN has reported, as the Justice Department considers whether there’s sufficient evidence for an indictment.

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House Democrats clashed Tuesday with Attorney General William Barr at a contentious hearing where they argued over the Justice Department’s deployment of federal officers to cities and the use of force against protesters, Barr’s intervention in the prosecution of two allies of President Donald Trump and numerous other issues.

Barr appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for the first time in a long-awaited showdown with Democrats, who have accused him of a litany of offenses and even raised the specter of impeachment.

Democrats launched into several impassioned attacks on Barr, and in multiple exchanges he and the lawmakers raised their voices and interrupted one another. When Democrats cut off Barr during their time to question him, he often used the next round of Republican questioning as a chance to respond.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, pressed Barr on whether federal troops deployed to cities were being used as “props” for Trump’s reelection. Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas pushed him on whether the Trump administration was fighting systemic racism in policing, and Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia accused Barr of aiding Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone and first national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Barr dismissed the Democratic charges, saying that he acted independently to protect the rule of law in the Stone and Flynn cases, that he disagreed there was systemic racism in police departments and that federal officers had been sent to protect federal buildings “under attack” and combat violence crime.

“I agree the President’s friends don’t deserve special breaks, but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people and sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make, especially when you know you’re going to be castigated for it,” Barr said.

Barr got into a heated back-and-forth with Johnson over Stone’s sentencing as Johnson repeatedly refused to let Barr respond while the Georgia Democrat recounted the episode.

“I know your story but I’m asking my question,” Johnson said as Barr tried to get a word in.

“I’m telling my story — that’s what I’m here to do,” Barr fired back.

The two men continued to speak over each other, at times in raised voices, with Johnson accusing Barr of “carrying out Trump’s will.”

“Let me ask you,” Barr shouted back at one point, referencing Stone’s age. “Do you think it is fair for a 67-year-old man to be sent to prison for seven to nine years?”

Democrats have detailed a long list of grievances, from Barr’s initial characterization of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to the Justice Department’s use of force against protesters to Barr’s threats to state and local officials over their handling of Covid-19. The topics in the hearing ping-ponged among the various controversies, covering everything from false claims of widespread mail-in voting fraud to the administration’s legal arguments surrounding the census.

“Your tenure is marked by a persistent war against the department’s professional core in an apparent effort to secure favors for the President,” Nadler said Tuesday. “The message these actions send is clear: In this Justice Department, the President’s enemies will be punished and his friends will be protected, no matter the cost.”

‘Without any direction or interference’

In his prepared remarks, Barr accused Democrats of seeking to discredit him because of his investigation “into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe,” though he did not read that part of his statement at Tuesday’s hearing.

“My decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgment, based on the law and fact, without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the Department,” Barr said.

Republican lawmakers had a different set of issues they were eager to discuss with Barr related to the FBI’s actions in the Russia investigation, which Barr has tapped US Attorney John Durham to investigate.

“Spying, that one word, that’s why they’re after you, Mr. Attorney General,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the panel’s top Republican, a reference to Barr’s comments last year about FBI surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser. “I want to thank you for having the courage to say we’re going to get the politics out of the Department of Justice that was there in the previous administration.”

Republican lawmakers praised Barr’s response to violence occurring at protests across the country. Jordan played a video in his opening statement splicing together violence and rioting that included attacks on police officers.

“The fact of the matter is if you take Portland, the courthouse is under attack. The federal resources are inside the perimeter around the courthouse defending it from almost two months of daily attacks where people march to the court, try to gain entrance and have set fires, thrown things, used explosives, and injured police,” Barr said.

The start of the hearing was delayed for about an hour after Nadler was involved in a car accident on his way to Washington Tuesday morning, a spokesman said. Nadler was not injured in the accident, in which he was not driving and which did not involve another vehicle, the spokesman said.

Nadler is investigating several of Barr’s actions and had threatened to subpoena the attorney general before they agreed on Tuesday’s appearance. Last month, after Trump had Barr fire the US attorney in Manhattan who had been overseeing an investigation into the President’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Nadler suggested that his committee might attempt to impeach Barr, though he also called pursuing it a “waste of time” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tamped down talk of impeachment.

Barr had never previously appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. He last appeared on Capitol Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2019, when he defended his decision-making in the rollout of the special counsel report. More than a year removed, however, the Mueller saga was just one topic of many issues touched on during Tuesday’s hearing.

In February, Barr clawed back a sentencing recommendation that career prosecutors in Washington, DC, had requested for Stone, the longtime friend of Trump convicted by a jury of charges including lying to Congress and witness tampering, arguing it was too stiff. In May, the Justice Department said it would drop the charges against Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser whose guilty plea had been secured by Mueller’s team, after an internal review initiated by Barr turned up evidence the attorney general said showed the investigators had built an improper case.

Several Democrats pushed Barr on getting involved in the Stone case, questioning his decision to lessen the line prosecutors’ recommendation, which prompted the prosecutors to leave the case.

“Mr. Attorney General, he threatened the life of a witness,” Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida said to Barr, a reference to Stone’s threats to Randy Credico.

“The judge agreed with me,” Barr responded, arguing Credico did not actually feel threatened and a sentencing enhancement wasn’t warranted.

Protests and policing

More recently, Barr’s hand in the administration’s crackdown on the protests across the country that followed George Floyd’s killing in May has generated outrage from Democrats. Barr played a central role in the decision to forcibly disperse a peaceful demonstration at Lafayette Square in June ahead of a staged walk through the park by Trump. And the Justice Department has also dispatched some federal officers to Portland, where rioters have clashed with authorities nightly outside a complex of federal buildings.

“Mr. Barr, my question is very specific. Do you think it is ever appropriate to use tear gas on peaceful protesters?” asked Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat.

“It is appropriate to use tear gas when it’s indicated to disperse,” Barr responded.

“On peaceful protesters?” Cicilline interrupted.

“To disperse an unlawful assembly, and sometimes, unfortunately, peaceful protesters are affected by that,” Barr said.

Republicans accused Democrats of ignoring the attacks against police officers, and Barr chided them for not denouncing violence. “I hope the Democratic Party takes a stand against the violence,” Barr said.

Barr said that he has made clear to the Trump administration that he “would like to pick the cities” where federal law enforcement officers are deployed under a Justice Department crime-fighting program “based on law enforcement need.”

Nadler, in the hearing’s first set of questions, had tried to suggest that Barr’s expansion of Operation Legend was done as a political move to boost the President’s campaign, but Barr disputed that. Barr described how a predecessor program to Legend had been “squelched” by the pandemic, necessitating the “reboot” under the new operation.

Barr called the killing of Floyd “horrible,” saying it “understandably jarred the whole country and forced us to reflect on long-standing issues in our nation.” But he also recounted the ways that policing in America has changed since “the civil rights movement finally succeeded in tearing down the Jim Crow edifice.”

Jackson Lee pressed Barr on whether the administration was seeking “to end systemic racism and racism in law enforcement” and qualified immunity, the legal doctrine critics say shields law enforcement officers from accountability.

“I don’t agree that there’s systemic racism in the police department generally in this country,” Barr said, adding that he did not support an end to qualified immunity.

Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat, charged that Barr was incorrect that the justice system had been made equal.

“I said the law, I said the laws were made equal,” Barr said.

“The laws were made equal; they are certainly not applied equally,” Bass responded. “We do have systemic problems in our law enforcement system, our criminal justice system, on every level.”

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When President Donald Trump first raised the idea Monday morning of emerging from the 13-foot gate that surrounds the White House, aides were skeptical.

The logistics of any last-minute presidential movement are difficult even under normal circumstances, and these were anything but. For three straight nights, protests around the 18-acre White House compound had turned volatile and fiery, at one point sending Trump into an underground bunker with his family. But Trump was determined to show he was still in charge and that the situation, at least outside his own front door, was under control.

As he conferred with top military brass at the White House over how to quell protests around the country, Trump said he wanted to make the walk to the nearby historic St. John’s Church, where a fire had been set in the basement the previous night.

In the ensuing hours, White House officials hurried to make arrangements for the evening event, which ultimately devolved into a discordant and violent spectacle, with federal law enforcement agents clashing with protestors in Lafayette Square, a federally owned greenspace north of the White House.

A day after the incident, interviews with White House officials and sources across the government reveal a confusing, harried series of decisions that were not fully coordinated, as well as conflicting accounts of who was in charge and how a peaceful protest ended in a violent confrontation.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, Washington police Chief Peter Newsham said he didn’t know about the plans until only about 30 to 45 minutes before the visit happened, and that his officers were not involved. Trump’s walk to the church also appears to have come as a surprise to the Interior Department, whose secretary, David Bernhardt, wasn’t at the White House and didn’t get a heads up in advance that the park — which his department oversees — was going to be cleared of protesters so quickly.

Even some of the top administration officials who trailed Trump as he strode to the church suggested later they were caught off guard to find themselves in the middle of the highly fraught picture.

Barr gave the order

Ultimately, it was Attorney General William Barr who ordered the move to clear protestors, according to a Justice Department official. Barr and other top officials from agencies responsible for securing the White House had previously planned to secure a wider perimeter around Lafayette Square in response to fires and destruction caused by protestors on Sunday night.

That plan, had it been enacted, would have cleared the area by 4 p.m., the official said, not 25 minutes before the 7 p.m. curfew put in place by Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, which is ultimately what happened. It’s unclear whether Barr’s order was communicated to Park Police and other officers on the front lines.

Barr eventually appeared in Lafayette Square shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, about an hour before Trump left the White House. In a scene that was captured on news cameras, Barr stood flanked by a security detail, his chief of staff and the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. As Barr surveyed the situation around the park, some protesters spotted and recognized him, and shouts went up.

Barr had been told that police believed protestors were gathering rocks to throw at law enforcement, and while he was in the park, water bottles were thrown in his direction, the official said. CNN did not witness any water bottles being thrown at the attorney general.

Before walking to the White House, Barr told police to clear the area, the Justice Department official said. If federal law enforcement was met with resistance by the protestors, crowd control measures should be implemented, Barr told them, according to the official.

Preparations for a speech

Meanwhile in the White House, staffers had begun preparing the Rose Garden with a stage, podium and teleprompters, even though it wasn’t yet certain Trump had finalized his decision to deliver remarks or venture outside the complex.

After a morning that included a telephone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and a video-conference spent berating the nation’s governors for appearing “weak” in the face of violent protests, Trump and his aides began considering a short address to precede the walk through Lafayette Square.

While it was Trump who came up with the idea of the church visit, senior adviser Hope Hicks, chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump, were involved in the initial planning of the operation, according to two senior White House officials. The final decision to visit the church came roughly five hours before police and military forces swarmed the park to clear out the protesters, though officials in the press office were not looped into the plan until much later.

As reporters were scrambled to the Rose Garden to set up for Trump’s speech, loud bangs began on the other side of the White House fence.

Just after 6:22 p.m., the transmission came over the police radios — US Park Police had issued the first warning to protestors, a law enforcement source told CNN.

With Barr gone from the scene, authorities made their move, with lines of federal officers in riot gear converging on the protestors.

A violent advance

The advance by Park Police was swift and sudden. There were fewer protestors in the park than there had been the day before, but the crowd was energized, alternating between chants supporting the movement — “Say his name: George Floyd!” — and other more aggressive chants aimed at the wall of forces in riot gear lined up facing them.

As authorities converged, demonstrators started running, smoke filled the air and a loud pop sounded of projectiles being fired at those fleeing. Canisters sending up thick clouds of smoke and irritants landed at their feet and all but the few with gas masks started coughing as they were pushed back.

“People were running. And I was trying to help clear out people’s eyes,” said Rev. Gina Gerbasi, the rector at a different St. John’s Church in Georgetown who was at the Lafayette Square location on Monday evening. “Police were on the patio pushing people out. Tear gas, the flash bang things.”

“I am just a middle-aged white woman priest and a mom,” she said. “It was completely unprovoked. I didn’t hear bullhorns saying ‘the President’s coming.'”

A spokesperson for the Park Police said its officers were using pepper balls, not tear gas. Though the two have different chemical make-ups, they are both strong irritants that are used by law enforcement. Eyewitness accounts show canisters put off thick smoke that clearly contained an irritant that made people choke and cough.

On Tuesday, the Park Police issued a statement saying the decision to move on protestors was made to “curtail” violence, and that various objects had been thrown by protesters. CNN’s reporter who was on the scene all Monday afternoon did not witness any violence by the protestors, or anything being thrown by them.

The protesters who held the line confronted the advancing Park Police chanting “no justice, no peace.” Behind the row of police on foot was another on horseback. Deafening flash bangs were fired as they pushed forward. A young man hit by pepper spray was pushed by an officer as he shouted “I can’t see, I can’t see.”

“You’re shooting at people with their hands up!” one protester shouted. “We are not a threat!” shouted another.

The volleys kept coming. Protesters were flushed onto Connecticut Avenue, many coughing deeply, the canisters whizzing and spinning as they landed.

A middle-aged man was caught in a building’s alcove as the Park Police pressed forward, firing projectiles at him. He was holding his chest, clearly in distress. Demonstrators ran forward as the projectiles kept coming, helping to carry him away from the advancing forces.

By the time 7 p.m. finally arrived — when Washington’s curfew went into effect — the melee was all but over. The streets around the park and the White House had been emptied of protesters. The violence sent many home. Many others lingered and — now out on the streets where Washington’s police force has jurisdiction — were rounded up and detained for breaking the curfew.

A walk to remember

At 7:01 p.m. ET, Trump emerged from the North Portico of the White House, striding down the driveway and toward a cordon of law enforcement officers. Behind him trailed a large cadre of senior White House aides, including Ivanka Trump — carrying a designer purse with a Bible tucked inside — and her husband Jared, both senior advisers; chief of staff Mark Meadows; and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

Also joining Trump were Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who had been summoned to the Oval Office in the preceding hours to update the President on efforts to use the military to tamp down on violence.

A US defense official told reporters Monday that Esper and Milley “were not aware that the Park Police and law enforcement had made a decision to clear the square.”

And the official suggested neither man planned to join Trump as he walked across Lafayette Square to the church.

“As that meeting concluded, the President indicated an interest in viewing the troops that were outside, and the secretary and the chairman went with him to do so. That was the extent of what was taking place,” the official said.

All of the aides who appeared alongside Trump were white; the President has only a few senior African American advisers and his sole black Cabinet member, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, was not present, though Trump and Carson spoke by phone earlier Monday.

Vice President Mike Pence, the President’s frequent emissary to religious conservatives, was also conspicuously absent from the walk to St. John’s. A source familiar with the matter suggested Pence did not join Trump out of deference and to allow the President “his own spotlight.”

“I think the vice president instinctively knows when it’s a presidential moment and when it’s not,” the source said. “Yesterday was very much a presidential moment.”

It’s not clear if the President asked Pence to join him for the walk, but the two men had their private weekly lunch earlier the same day.

Even as Trump stepped out of the White House and into Lafayette Square, some White House officials insisted the maneuver was unrelated to his photo opportunity.

Some officials claimed the push was aimed at establishing a broader perimeter around Lafayette Square and the blocks around the White House. White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere claimed the perimeter was expanded to help enforce DC’s 7 p.m. curfew — an explanation that strained credulity given security forces began to fire tear gas and rubber bullets to push back protesters before the curfew came into effect.

The officials could not explain why they needed to establish a perimeter in time for the curfew or why they did not do so earlier in the day, before a large group of protesters had amassed.

One White House official said Monday aides now recognize the operation to clear out protesters from the Lafayette Square area should have been carried our earlier in the day in order to avoid the chaos that erupted.

“Maybe they should have done it a couple of hours earlier,” the official said. “The timing didn’t seem to work out for what the optics were.”

President Trump from the Rose Garden has invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would enable him to deploy active-duty US troops. This stems from a phone call he had with governors blaming protests on "radical left." #TheAtlantaVoicehttps://t.co/lQkyMRuH0G

— The Atlanta Voice (@theatlantavoice) June 1, 2020

A messy aftermath

As night descended on the capital Monday, and groups of protestors remained in the street in spite of a city-ordered curfew, Milley, Esper and Barr took to the streets of Washington to survey the ongoing military and federal law enforcement effort to clear the streets of protesters. Milley, whom Trump claimed would be “in charge” of the military response, surveyed the scene like a field general, camouflage military fatigues and all.

Barr monitored events, first in person near Farragut Square a few blocks from the White House. Video captured by news crews shows Barr standing on a broad sidewalk, milling around alongside men in suits, military officials in camouflage fatigues and law enforcement on bicycles, flashing red and blue light from nearby sirens reflecting off of his face. He later spent hours at a Justice Department command center.

After a news conference on Tuesday, Newsham, the DC police chief who has worked for the Metropolitan Police Department for three decades, lamented the show of force on Monday.

“The large majority of police officers in this country, certainly the police officers in this city, are very well meaning people trying to do the right thing,” he told CNN. “Whenever you have a police action that paints police in a negative light, it’s hurtful to me because that action can be attribute to all police officers,” he said.

At the same news conference, Bowser said she did not “see any provocation that would warrant the deployment of munitions and especially for the purpose of moving the president across the street.”

A couple hours earlier, Trump took to Twitter to tout the “overwhelming force” and “domination” in Washington the previous night, before thanking himself: “thank you President Trump!”

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The Justice Department has started to probe a series of stock transactions made by lawmakers ahead of the sharp market downturn stemming from the spread of coronavirus, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The inquiry, which is still in its early stages and being done in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has so far included outreach from the FBI to at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr, seeking information about the trades, according to one of the sources.

Public scrutiny of the lawmakers’ market activity has centered on whether members of Congress sought to profit from the information they obtained in non-public briefings about the virus epidemic.

Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has previously said that he relied only on public news reports as he decided to sell between $628,000 and $1.7 million in stocks on February 13. Earlier this month, he asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review the trades given “the assumption many could make in hindsight,” he said at the time.

There’s no indication that any of the sales, including Burr’s, broke any laws or ran afoul of Senate rules. But the sales have come under fire after senators received closed-door briefings about the virus over the past several weeks — before the market began trending downward. It is routine for the FBI and SEC to review stock trades when there is public question about their propriety.

In a statement Sunday to CNN, Alice Fisher, a lawyer for Burr, said that the senator “welcomes a thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate.”

“The law is clear that any American — including a Senator — may participate in the stock market based on public information, as Senator Burr did. When this issue arose, Senator Burr immediately asked the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a complete review, and he will cooperate with that review as well as any other appropriate inquiry,” said Fisher, who led the Justice Department’s criminal division under former President George W. Bush.

Congress passed the Stock Act in 2012, which made it illegal for lawmakers to use inside information for financial benefit.

Under insider trading laws, prosecutors would need to prove the lawmakers traded based on material non-public information they received in violation of a duty to keep it confidential.

Burr’s committee has received periodic briefings on coronavirus as the outbreak has spread, but the committee did not receive briefings on the virus the week of Burr’s stock sales, another source familiar with the matter told CNN earlier this month.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FBI and the SEC declined to comment.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday morning, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton would not confirm the inquiry, but sent a warning about trading with private information.

“Anyone who is privy to private information about a company or about markets needs to be cautious about how they use that private information. That’s fundamental to our securities laws and that applies to government employees, public officials, etc, and the Stock Act codifies that,” Clayton said.

Burr’s sales represent a sizable share of his portfolio of stocks, according to his latest Senate financial disclosure documents filed in May 2019, although exact numbers aren’t possible because lawmakers only report trades as a range of dollar values.

Several other senators from both parties also sold and bought stock ahead of the market downturn that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic, although it’s not clear who else the Justice Department is looking at and no other senator said they have been contacted by law enforcement. Burr is the only lawmaker to have asked for an Ethics Committee review.

GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and her husband sold 27 stocks valued between $1.275 million and $3.1 million from January 24 through February 14, according to Senate records.

They also purchased three stocks at a value of $450,000-$1 million, including shares in Citrix, a software company that’s gained approximately 15% in value since Loeffler and her husband bought the stock last month.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat in December and was sworn in in early January, has denied having any knowledge of the stock sales, saying she uses a third-party financial adviser and did not learn of the trades until later. Loeffler’s husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

A Loeffler spokesperson confirmed Loeffler has not been contacted by the FBI and said the senator “has acted in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the law.”

Others who traded relatively smaller amounts or sold fewer stocks than Burr and Loeffler have also faced public scrutiny.

Stock sales were reported last month by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Both Feinstein’s and Inhofe’s offices said the senators had not been contacted by the FBI.

Feinstein herself did not sell any stock, according to Senate records. Her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock of Allogene Therapeutics, a biotech company, in January and February. Feinstein said earlier this month that she has no involvement in her husband’s financial decisions.

“I have no input into his decisions. My husband in January and February sold shares of a cancer therapy company. This company is unrelated to any work on the coronavirus and the sale was unrelated to the situation,” she said in a statement.

Inhofe sold five stocks, worth between $180,000 and $400,000, in January, and another for $50,000-$100,000 in February. But he said in a statement earlier this month that he had no involvement in his investment decisions.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Sen. Cory Booker slammed the homeland security secretary in a speech Tuesday morning, Jan. 16, for claiming ignorance to the President’s slander of African countries.

The impassioned remarks came toward the end of an often testy oversight hearing in which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied hearing President Donald Trump say the words “shithole” or “shithouse” in a White House meeting on immigration last week.

Evoking the words of Martin Luther King and the “greatest heroes in this country who spoke out about people who have convenient amnesia or who are bystanders,” Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said Nielsen was “complicit” in the damage done by Trump’s reported insult.

“The commander in chief in an Oval Office meeting referring to people from African countries and Haitians with the most vile and vulgar language, that language festers. When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power it is a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and your amnesia is complicit in it,” Booker said.

At times visibly upset, Booker said he was “seething with anger” and recalled the “tears of rage” he shed when he first learned of the quote attributed to the President.

“For you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues, saying, ‘I’ve already answered that line of questions,’ when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they’re worried about happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me,” Booker said.

Earlier in the hearing, Nielsen had said she wanted to “move forward” from discussion of the language in the meeting after being quizzed by multiple senators.

“I have been very patient with this line of questioning” she said. “I have nothing further to say about a meeting that happened over a week ago. I’d like to move forward and discuss ways in which we can protect our country.”

With similar remarks, Sen. Kamala Harris and Booker marked their arrival as the two newest — and only second- and third-ever — black members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. Booker and Harris, also a Democrat, claimed spots on the committee earlier this month after the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken and the special election win by Sen. Doug Jones.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray continued to fend off questions over a controversial bureau report that linked black extremists to violence against police officers, this time at a House hearing Thursday.

His public explanation of the internal intelligence assessment on “Black Identity Extremists” followed a nearly two-hour meeting with lawmakers from the Congressional Black Caucus one day earlier. Criticism has grown for weeks from members of Congress and activist groups after the document was first published by the news organization Foreign Policy in October.

Speaking after the meeting Wed., Nov. 30, CBC Chairman Cedric Richmond said the discussion with Wray was like a “breath of fresh air” and said the director understood their outrage with the report.

“He owns it and he understands our frustration with it and our outright challenge of its accuracy and whether it’s useful at all,” Richmond said.

The 12-page intelligence assessment produced in August details influences behind a series of attacks it labels as perpetrated by black identity extremists. The grouping is one of nine movements investigated by the FBI’s domestic terrorism program — alongside white supremacy, anarchist and anti-abortion movements — and is comprised of individuals who use violence in response to “perceived racism and injustice in American society,” the agency says.

The report says it found that after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, it was “very likely” that “Black Identity Extremist perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement.”

Six total cases of so-called black identity extremist attackers are identified from the years that followed, including the sniper who killed five police officers in downtown Dallas in July of last year, and the man who ambushed and killed three police officers the week after in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A law enforcement official confirmed the authenticity of the report to CNN. Agency officials have testified that the FBI has around 1,000 pending domestic terrorism investigations.

Rep. Karen Bass, a caucus member who represents parts of Los Angeles, questioned the methodology of the report and said Wray had promised to get back to the group on some of the origins of its assessment.

“How did they even come up with the term black identity extremist?” Bass asked. “We reject the entire notion of that and will not stand for a whole new generation of people exercising their first amendment rights to protest police brutality to have to go through what generations went through in the ’70s and in the ’80s.”

Rep. Elijiah Cummings said the report would have a “chilling effect” on groups like Black Lives Matter and called for it to be pulled.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday, Wray called the meeting with the CBC “candid and constructive” and sought to put the report in context.

“I can assure you and the rest of the American people that we do not investigate people for rhetoric, for ideology, for First Amendment expression, for association,” Wray said.

“When there’s credible evidence of a federal crime involving the credible threat of force or violence to further a political or social goal, that’s our focus,” he said.

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