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Analysis | President Trump’s false claim that counter-demonstrators lacked a permit (593 hits)

Analysis | President Trump’s false claim that counter-demonstrators lacked a permit
By Glenn Kessler -- The Washington Post

“You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent. . . . You had a lot of people in that [white nationalist] group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don’t know if you know — they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit.”

— President Trump, remarks during a news conference on infrastructure, Aug. 15, 2017

In blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville that left one person dead, President Trump twice asserted that the people protesting white supremacists and neo-Nazis lacked a permit, unlike the groups that gathered to protest the possible removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

But that’s turned out to be false, according to documents and interviews obtained by our Washington Post colleague Justin Moyer.

Walt Heinecke, a professor at the University of Virginia, told Moyer that he received a “special events certificate of approval” for events at McGuffey Park and Justice Park — sites blocks from Emancipation Park, where white nationalists had a permit for a Saturday rally. A car allegedly driven by James Alex Fields Jr. rammed into counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman, on Fourt Street, which runs adjacent to Justice Park.

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