From the Start, Federal Agents Demanded a Role in Suppressing Anti-Racism Protests

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sergio Olmos, Mike Baker and Adam Goldman, The New York Times

29 July 20

Twin government memos show how a gung-ho federal law enforcement response to anti-racism protests may have been driven by a shaky understanding of the demonstrations’ roots.

rom the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate.

A memo from the deputy director of the F.B.I., dated June 2, demanded an immediate mobilization as protests gathered after George Floyd’s death while he was in police custody a week earlier. David L. Bowdich, the F.B.I.’s No. 2, declared the situation “a national crisis,” and wrote that in addition to investigating “violent protesters, instigators” and “inciters,” bureau leaders should collect information with “robust social media exploitation teams” and examine what appeared to be “highly organized behavior.”

Mr. Bowdich suggested that the bureau could make use of the Hobbs Act, put into place in the 1940s to punish racketeering in labor groups, to charge the protesters.

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