Park Police Had Planned to Clear Area Before Trump’s Walk to Church, Watchdog Says

The report by the Interior Department’s inspector general did not investigate what other law enforcement agencies knew and who might have ordered them to use force to clear Lafayette Square.

WASHINGTON — A federal watchdog said on Wednesday that the United States Park Police had been planning to clear protesters from a park near the White House well before they learned that President Donald J. Trump was going to walk through the area last year. The report by the Interior Department’s inspector general concluded that “the evidence did not support a finding” that the Park Police had cleared the area just for Mr. Trump, who strode through it on June 1 last year before posing for photographs in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church holding a Bible. The burst of violence in Lafayette Square, which came at the height of the racial justice protests last summer, became one of the defining moments of the Trump presidency. Protesters in the shadow of the White House were pushed back with smoke, flash grenades and chemical spray deployed by shield-bearing riot officers and mounted police.