House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi falsely claimed Tuesday she didn’t actually call federal law enforcement officers “stormtroopers,” but said that they “acted like stormtroopers.”
She made the attempted clarification on MSNBC’s “The Beat” with Ari Melber after being shown a clip from Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr. During an exchange between Rep. Doug Collins and Barr, the Georgia Republican called Pelosi's comment a “direct reference to the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party” and wondered if the AG thought it “encourages the violence that we’re seeing and encourages the participation against the police?”
Barr said it was “possible” and that he believed it is “irresponsible to call these federal law enforcement officers stormtroopers.”
“I said they acted like stormtroopers, and they did,” Pelosi insisted after the exchange was shown. “And my colleagues have said that as well.”
The problem is that her tweet from July 17 is still up referring to these federal agents as “stormtroopers.”
Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 18, 2020
These are not the actions of a democratic republic.@DHSgov’s actions in Portland undermine its mission.
Trump & his stormtroopers must be stopped.
Later, she took a jab at Barr over the federal government's response at Lafayette Square, calling it a "disgrace."
"So this — it’s really — he was like a blob," she said. "He was like just a henchman for the President of the United States instead of the Attorney General of the United States of America."
.@SpeakerPelosi tries clarifying that she said federal police “acted like” stormtroopers but weren’t literally “stormtroopers” pic.twitter.com/Jiq7dqSYFf
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 28, 2020