Arrest records disprove Trump’s claims that Antifa caused disruption during Black Lives Matter...

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents has suggested that Donald Trump’s claims that people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice are violent urban left-wing radicals is incorrect.

Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organised extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighbourhoods Mr Trump vows to protect from the violence in his re-election push to win support from the suburbs, the report said.

Attorney General William Barr has urged his prosecutors to bring federal charges against protesters who cause violence and has suggested that rarely used sedition charges could apply.

The Department of Justice has pushed for detention even as prisons across the US were releasing high-risk inmates because of Covid-19 and prosecutors had been told to consider the risks of incarceration during a pandemic when seeking detention.