Appearing Tuesday on the Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell called on the Department of Justice to investigate Antifa’s vicious attack on journalist Andy Ngo in Portland over the weekend.
A partial transcript is as follows:
BILL HEMMER: You spoke to him [Andy Ngo]. How is he doing? You are a friend of his as well. He took quite a beating there in Portland on Saturday. What do you believe the Justice Department can do what this, if anything?
AMB. RICHARD GRENELL: I spoke to Andy yesterday and today. As you said, Andy is a friend of mine and when I watched this horrific beating and I saw the video of him appealing for help from the police, I knew I had the ability and responsibility to speak out and to define this issue in a way that others weren’t. It’s very troubling to me. This is something that could have been avoided. This group in Portland targeted Andy. They told him that they would rough him up. He was trying to do his job and he was a very courageous young man for trying to do that. They knew who he was, they knew he was gay they knew he was Asian, and they knew he was conservative. We’re now in a situation where the largest gay and lesbian groups in the United States have stayed silent on this attack.
[…]
HEMMER: What do you expect from [Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler] and the Justice Department?
GRENELL: I have asked the Justice Department to look into this, to investigate it because the information that they had, that the mayor’s office had police department had, all of this information was known beforehand. They targeted Andy and the local authorities didn’t do anything about it. While the mayor wants to make it like this is about free speech, this is not about free speech. You don’t show up with a tire-iron to do some sort of a free speech rally. They looked for Andy. They targeted him.