Unusual suspect among arrested ‘domestic terrorists’ 

An attorney with the FBI-advising SPLC has been accused of taking part in a ‘Treehouse Antifa’ riot

Authorities in the US state of Georgia have arrested 23 people and charged them with “domestic terrorism” after what they described as a “coordinated attack” on an Atlanta site where a police training center was under construction. Among those arrested is a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group advising the FBI on extremism. 

Almost every rioter arrested was from out of state, including two foreign nationals – one French and one Canadian. One of the two Georgians involved was identified on Monday as Thomas Jurgens, a staff attorney with the SPLC, a self-styled civil rights organization.

“This wasn’t about a public training center; this was about anarchy,” Atlanta police told reporters on Sunday evening, describing how “violent agitators” used the cover of a music festival to attack the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center construction site.

The rioters changed into all-black clothes, breached the site, and attacked law enforcement officers with “large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks,” the police said, providing a video of the incident from the security cameras.

BREAKING: @Atlanta_Police released the footage of the violent #Antifa @defendATLforest attack on police & the construction site of the Public Safety Training Center. The attackers are masked, & they came with explosive fireworks & firebombs. The officers https://t.co/s9iLQWowj1… https://t.co/yT6tFnrdBZ pic.twitter.com/C0mtL4MRQw

— Andy Ngô