In Wednesday’s media announcement of Trump’s plan to send federal agents to cities to supposedly stop crime, Attorney General Bill Barr claimed the program, dubbed “Operation Legend,” had resulted in 200 arrests in Kansas City in just two weeks.
An investigation by the Kansas City Star, however, finds Barr overestimated the count… by 199.
“Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,” Barr said during the Wednesday announcement of the operation, which transferred 200 federal agents to Kansas City.
The Star, however, found just one arrest, made two days before Barr’s statement, connected to “Operation Legend,” of a 20-year-old man made by an Independence, Missouri police officer working with a US Marshal.
A senior Justice Department official amended Barr’s statement late Wednesday night, saying that the 200 arrests had happened since December 2019, not in the last two weeks as Barr stated. However, federal officials hadn’t announced the implementation of “Operation Legend” until July 8, 2020.