President Trump may be poised to take some kind of action in support of the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who walked past their home on June. 28.
Video of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, he holding a rifle, she waving a handgun, was posted online after the incident and went viral.
The couple could face criminal charges.
Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, who spoke by phone with Trump on Tuesday, says the president will be “getting involved” in the case.
“The president said that he would do everything he could within his powers to help with this situation and he would be taking action to do that,” Parson said at a news conference after that call.
Parson offered no details about how the president might get “involved” in a case in which the federal government has no jurisdiction. But he said U.S. Attorney General William Barr was “represented” on his call with Trump.
The prosecutor investigating the case, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, accused Trump and Parsons of playing politics with a local criminal investigation.
“It is unbelievable the Governor of the state of Missouri would seek advice from one of the most divisive leaders in our generation to overpower the discretion of a locally elected prosecutor,” Gardner said in a statement.
“Trump’s apparent eagerness to involve himself in a state case that pits a viral gun-toting couple against racial injustice protesters is another example of his attempts to oppose protesters at any opportunity,” says the Washington Post.
Citing the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Post adds that the McCloskeys “have a history of suing their neighbors, family members, employers and others for a wide spectrum of disputes.”
The couple said they feared for their lives when scores of protesters passed their home — sometimes described as a “mansion” — on a private street.
Trump adopted their side of the story in a Tuesday interview on the right-wing news source Townhall, the Post says.
“They were going to be beat up badly if they were lucky. If they were lucky,” the president said. “They were going be beat up badly and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down like they tried to burn down churches.”
In fact, there was no violence during the protest march and even the McCloskeys’ claim that a gate to their yard was damaged proved to be false.