One morning in court the other day, Maj. Gen. Timothy L. Rieger, a soft-spoken, broad-shouldered military official who has played a bit role in Portland’s National Guard saga, recalled a news item from several years ago that moved him.

The protests over the murder of George Floyd were in full swing in California. And the state’s National Guard, which he then helped lead, was deployed in broad force to quell the unrest. There had, he recalled, been “ravaging, pillaging, plundering.” But in Rieger’s telling, the arrival of the troops restored calm. One of the best examples, he said, occurred in Los Angeles, when, joining demonstrators, “one of our captains actually got down on the ground and prayed.”

The point of this whole account—at least the point that the attorney for the U.S. Departme

See Full Page