Attorney General Bill Barr will go after violent demonstrators with a 1968 law meant to quell rioting.
“We must have law and order on our streets and in our communities,” Barr said Saturday at DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC.
“It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting,” he said. “We will enforce these laws.”
Barr accused “anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics” for the unrest that has spread to cities throughout the nation since Monday, in the wake of the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.
“Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda,” he said.
The federal Anti-Riot Act, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, carries penalties of up to five years in prison.