WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AP) — Attorney General William Barr yesterday defended the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in America as he testified for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee.

He pushed back against angry, sceptical Democrats who said President Donald Trump’s administration is unconstitutionally suppressing dissent.

The hearing, held yesterday as the late civil rights icon John Lewis lay in state steps away outside the Capitol, highlighted the wide election-year gulf between the two parties on police brutality and systemic racism in law enforcement. Massive protests have sparked unrest across the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, and calls for police reform are growing louder.

But Barr said “violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests” and argued the violence taking place in Portland, Oregon, and other cities is disconnected from Floyd’s killing, which he called a “horrible” event that prompted a necessary national reckoning on the relationship between the black community and law enforcement. But he also said there was no systemic racism in law enforcement.

“Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform,” Barr said of the Portland protests.

The hearing marks Barr’s first appearance before the committee after 18 months in office, bringing him face-to-face with the panel that voted last year to hold him in contempt and is holding hearings on what Democrats say is politicisation of the Justice Department under his watch. But little new ground was uncovered; fuming Democrats often used their five minutes to lay out their frustrations and cut Barr off as he attempted to answer questions.

The hearing comes during a tumultuous stretch in which Barr has taken actions cheered by President Donald Trump but condemned by Democrats and other critics. Among them: the Justice Department’s decision to drop the prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn and Barr’s urging for a more lenient sentence for Trump ally Roger Stone, a move that prompted the entire trial team’s departure. Trump later commuted the sentence entirely.

The top Republican on the panel, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, used his opening statement to show an eight-minute video that spliced together images of violence by protesters around the country.

Democrats retorted with a video of their own of more peaceful protesters, shown by Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline.

“We fought for democracy, for the right to speak freely and you are attempting to take that away,” Cicilline told Barr. “What’s worse, you’re doing it for the sole purpose of furthering the president’s political agenda and generating footage for Trump campaign commercials.”

Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said the Trump Administration had “twisted the Department of Justice into a shadow of its former self”, serving the powerful before average Americans.

Nadler said Barr had “aided and abetted” Trump’s worst impulses and excoriated him and the Justice Department for turning a blind eye to necessary reforms to police departments, for dismissing Black Lives Matter protests and for flooding streets with federal agents to stop protesters.

Under combative questioning, Barr acerbically defended himself but revealed little new information about his motivations or the Justice Department’s recent actions on policing or otherwise.

His testimony underscored his department’s ongoing effort to differentiate between increasing violence in some cities and Floyd’s death, which has led to state charges against four officers and is under investigation by federal authorities. Massive but peaceful demonstrations followed Floyd’s death in May.

The attorney general acknowledged that Floyd’s death struck a chord in the black community because it reinforced concerns black people are treated differently by police. But he condemned Americans who he says have responded inappropriately to Floyd’s death.

“As elected officials of the federal government, every member of this committee — regardless of your political views or your feelings about the Trump administration — should condemn violence against federal officers and destruction of federal property,” Barr said.

Civil unrest escalated in Portland after federal agents were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable cause; the people were detained and later released. And in Washington, DC, peaceful protesters were violently cleared from the streets by federal officers using smoke bombs and pepper balls last month before a photo op by Trump in front of St John’s church.

Barr defended the broad use of law enforcement power to deal with the situation, noting that protesters had earlier set fire to the church and “it was total consensus that you couldn’t allow that to happen so close to the White House.” The department’s internal watchdog has opened investigations into use of force and other tactics by agents in Washington and Portland.

He also said the force was used because the protesters would not disperse from the area when law enforcement officials were trying to move back the security perimeter, a decision made the night before. When pressed on details, he pointed to the investigations.

The use of pepper spray was warranted, even if peaceful protesters were also harmed, he said.

Beyond the federal response to the demonstrations, Barr was pressed in detail about his intervention in the Flynn and Stone cases, both of which arose from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Democrats criticised him for partly taking into account Stone’s health and age, 67, and said those standards haven’t been used in other similar cases.

Barr said he told the acting US attorney that “we are going to leave it up to the judge” and that he ordered the revised recommendation to be filed when the prosecutors submitted an initial recommendation calling for a sentence of seven to nine years.

“And even though I knew I would get a lot of criticism for doing that, I think at the end of the day my obligation is to be fair to the individual,” Barr said.

Barr also addressed Trump’s assertions on Twitter that the 2020 presidential election will be “rigged”. Asked by Louisiana Representative Cedric Richmond if that could be the case, Barr said “I have no reason to think it will be”. Barr also said he agrees with the nation’s intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, despite Trump’s reluctance to embrace that point.