Report: Homeland Security Labels Portland Anti-Trump Protests "Domestic Terrorist Violence"

The assessment was made in a recent federal report uncovered by The Intercept.

Anti-Trump march on Nov. 10, 2016. (Joe Riedl)

Tonight The Intercept reports that the Department of Homeland Security regarded post-election protests in Portland to be "domestic terrorist violence."

The story is based on a six-page report by DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center, dated Feb. 21.

According to the story, the report focuses mostly on North Carolina, but it does contain an agency "assess[ment]" that, stunningly—and falsely—labels a great number of Portlanders to be violent terrorists.

The Intercept (a journalism website founded by Glenn Greenwald after the Edward Snowden affair with funding from eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar) did not say in its story how it obtained the DHS report.

The Portland protests cited as "domestic terrorist violence" by DHS lasted six nights and were mostly peaceful, although demonstrators did repeatedly block highways and engage in tense standoffs with police.

On the second night of the protests, masked men smashed car windshields in the Lloyd District and store windows in the Pearl District. That vandalism occurred shortly after Portland police declared the protests "a riot"—a designation that gave them more leeway to make arrests.

Protests have continued in Portland after Trump's inauguration—even as police crackdowns have escalated. Riot police arrests on Feb. 20 were so violent that Mayor Ted Wheeler asked police brass to scale back their response.

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