According to a new 220-page bombshell report on the investigation into the August 12th ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by former Virginia U.S. Attorney Tim Heapy, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas did indeed order a stand down, telling officers to ‘let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.’ As reported by Vice News, a team of four lawyers, in addition to a sizeable support staff consisting of paralegals and librarians, conducted their investigation over a 90-day period, interviewing more than 150 people, and reviewing thousands of documents and images, as well as hundreds of hours of video recordings. Their conclusion: police were unprepared, and due to an inadequate response, failed to protect the safety of the public.
The newly released report, heavily criticized by members of local governing bodies, flies in the face of recent comments by Charlottesville City Councilman Bob Fenwick, who in an interview with The Daily Progress, stated he takes ‘strong issue’ with accusations of an unprepared local police force and persistent rumors of a stand down order, which has been suspected by local residents and online spectators alike since before the clashes ceased on the night of August 12th. In addition to defending Chief Thomas, Fenwick claimed the large scale investigation is a ‘whitewash’ of the day’s events, and insisted the contents of the report should not be made completely available public, further demonstrating the lack of transparency we’ve seen coming out of the City of Charlottesville in the months since the ‘Unite the Right’ rally took place.
Fenwick’s behavior ahead of the report’s release, and Charlottesville’s refusal to acknowledge stand down orders given by Thomas, mirror those of a wider community of political hacks and mainstream media reporters. In fact, multiple ‘fact-checking’ websites are still pushing the false narrative of an appropriate response, claiming reports of a stand-down order originated as an online conspiracy theory. A quick look at Charlottesville’s local officials and their ties to the Democratic Party makes it easy to see why they’ve managed to skate by with such little criticism in the press, and why national politicians and media outlets have made every effort to shield the American people from the fact that in addition to members of the crowd with white supremacist ties, radical left-wing militants were bussed into the City of Charlottesville from many corners of the United States, armed with bottles and balloons full of urine, feces, and concrete. Of course, it would be very bad for the Democratic Party if the American people knew a Democrat-run city allowed a riot that included the brutal murder of Heather Heyer, and a helicopter crash resulting in the deaths of two Virginia State Police Officers to take place in exchange for the suppression of free speech.
