By Vonnai Phair
The Seattle Times
(The Seatle Times) — Former President Donald Trump referenced Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest during the presidential debate Tuesday night, falsely claiming protesters took over a big portion of the city and have not been prosecuted.
During the debate, Trump was asked if he has any regrets about what he did on Jan. 6, 2021, when he had asked his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol that ultimately led to the insurrection.
In response, Trump, who was president in 2020 when protesters started the CHOP to protest police brutality after the death of George Floyd, said: “When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted or in Seattle? They went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. When are those people going to be prosecuted?”
The zone’s size fluctuated, but it essentially occupied about six city blocks surrounding the Seattle Police Department East Precinct building and Cal Anderson Park, extending east to 12th Avenue, west to Broadway, south to East Pine Street and north to East Denny Way.
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In May 2023, a 22-year-old man pleaded guilty to killing a 19-year-old man, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, inside CHOP the night of June 20, 2020. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, followed by three years in community custody.
In June 2021, Isaiah Thomas Willoughby, 36, pleaded guilty in federal court to setting a fire outside the abandoned Seattle Police East Precinct during CHOP, also known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ. He was sentenced to two years in prison. U.S. District Court in Seattle also imposed a three-year period of supervised release after the two-year sentence.
During June’s presidential debate, Trump also mentioned Seattle, falsely claiming that the protest zone dismantled after he threatened to send in the National Guard.
“It is unconstitutional and illegal to send the military into Seattle,” then-Mayor Jenny Durkan said at the time. “There is no imminent threat of an invasion of Seattle.”
Ultimately, four shootings, including the killings of Anderson and 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., were reported in and around the CHOP zone. No one has been charged in Mays’ death.
The violence led Durkan to clear the zone using heavily equipped officers and tactical vehicles from Seattle police and other agencies, with a threat to arrest anyone who stayed behind. Dozens of protesters were arrested.
(Seattle Times staff reporter Lauren Girgis contributed to this report.)
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