Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Tuesday that President Trump would be “getting involved” in the case of the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at a group of protesters passing outside their home last month, and who are under review for criminal charges.

On Tuesday, both the president and Republican governor offered separate impassioned defenses of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who went viral after brandishing guns at protesters on the private street outside their mansion on June 28.

Parson, who said the couple had “every right to protect their property,” said he spoke with Trump just before the governor’s coronavirus news briefing. He said Trump made it clear he “doesn’t like what he sees and the way these people are being treated,” referencing the McCloskeys.

He said Attorney General William P. Barr “was represented on the call,” and he thinks the president and the attorney general “are going to take a look” at the McCloskeys’ case.

“The president said that he would do everything he could within his powers to help with this situation and he would be taking action to do that,” Parson said.

The prosecutor investigating the McCloskeys, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner (D), responded by accusing Trump and Parsons of playing politics with a local criminal investigation. Gardner said the facts of the case and the applicable laws are still under review and she would “apply them equally, regardless of the people involved.”

“It is unbelievable the Governor of the state of Missouri would seek advice from one of the most divisive leaders in our generation to overpower the discretion of a locally elected prosecutor,” Gardner said in a statement.

Trump’s apparent eagerness to involve himself in a state case that pits a viral gun-toting couple against racial injustice protesters is another example of his attempts to oppose protesters at any opportunity. Trump said in a Tuesday interview with Townhall, a conservative news website, that any attempt to prosecute the couple for a crime would be a “disgrace."

Earlier in the day, Trump also scoffed at a question about black people dying at the hands of law enforcement — an urgent focus of the protests — by pointing out police also kill white people. He recently described BLM as a “symbol of hate” and has called for protecting Confederate monuments, painting those seeking to topple statues with racist histories as violent mobs.

In his news conference, Parson did not offer any details about how the president would be “getting involved” in a case in which the federal government has no jurisdiction. Federal intervention in a state criminal investigation would be unusual and legally questionable depending on the assistance Parson is seeking.

Representatives for the Justice Department could not be immediately reached.

The McCloskeys — who have a history of suing their neighbors, family members, employers and others for a wide spectrum of disputes, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found — have said they feared for their lives when more than 100 protesters, who were headed to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home, walked onto their private street. The protesters have acknowledged trespassing on the private street, but deny damaging any property; the McCloskeys claimed they broke their gate.

In interviews with Fox News and CNN, the couple tried to paint the protesters as a mob of “terrorists” intent on killing them, burning down their home and ransacking it, although there is no evidence the protesters attempted to do so.

On Tuesday, Trump adopted their side of the story, defending the couple while seeming to repeat the claims the couple made about imminent death and destruction.

“When you look at St. Louis, where two people, they came out. They were going to be beat up badly if they were lucky. If they were lucky,” the president told Townhall’s Katie Pavlich. “They were going be beat up badly and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down like they tried to burn down churches.

“And these people were standing there, never used it and they were legal, the weapons. And now I understand somebody local, they want to prosecute these people. It’s a disgrace,” Trump said.

Parson views Gardner’s investigation as an affront to the Second Amendment, saying he believed the couple was legally allowed to brandish the firearms under the state’s “castle doctrine” — Missouri’s “stand-your-ground” law that allows property owners to use force against intruders who cause property owners fear of imminent harm.

The governor on Tuesday suggested he wanted Gardner removed from office. Parson said the state legislature should consider ways to remove local elected officials in future legislative sessions, and appeared to want to involve Trump in the immediate case.

“We’ve got to explain to him why it’s very difficult for an elected official in this state, for a governor, to remove somebody from office, or what powers you have as a governor,” Parson said at the briefing. “I don’t want to make it sound like he’s going to come in and remove somebody from office. But I’ll guarantee you that the president’s focused on what’s happening here.”

Gardner, who is black, suggested Trump and Parson were launching racially motivated attacks against her.

“It is also incredible that at a time when our nation is dealing with a rapidly spreading deadly virus and our State reported a record number of new infections, they are launching these dog-whistle attacks against me,” she said. “They should be focused on their jobs, and I’ll focus on mine.”

A lawyer for the couple could not be immediately be reached for comment late Tuesday. Attorney Joel Schwartz, who has previously maintained there is no basis for criminal charges against the McCloskeys, told the Associated Press over the weekend that police had executed a search warrant to seize the guns the couple brandished last month. St. Louis police applied for another warrant on Tuesday without elaborating on what it would cover, KMOV reported.

“The hostility is what I noticed,” St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief John Hayden told KMOV of the June 28 incident. “I don’t want to see guns out when people are very hostile and angry at each other. Those are recipes for violence."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/15/trump-st-louis-mccloskeys/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-low_mm-mccloskeys-1245pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans