Rudy Giuliani wildly claims Black Lives Matter are a 'domestic terror group' who 'hate white men in particular'
No proof exists suggesting Black Lives Matter political organisation is behind any terrorist attacks
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Your support makes all the difference.President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has claimed Black Lives Matter is a "domestic terrorist group," despite the group never being tied to a single terrorism event in a global database of almost 200,000.
"These are killers, and these are people who hate white people. They're people who hate white men in particular. And they want to do away with a mother-father family," Mr Giuliani said on Fox and Friends on Thursday, although ample evidence debunks that claim.
While the US State Department has a list of foreign terror organisations, the government does not legally denominate domestic terror groups.
In two separate incidents on 7 July 2016, two black US military veterans allegedly invoked the phrase "black lives matter" as they opened fire on police and civilians in Dallas, Texas, and Bristol, Tennessee.
Investigators determined both men had acted alone, and that the Black Lives Matter political organisation was in no way involved.
"That's not to suggest that no one associated with BLM — or any particular movement — never engages in some criminal behavior," Joshua Geltzer, a counterterrorism expert who has worked on the national security council, told PolitiFact in July. "But the relevant question is whether the organization itself engages in the type of activity laid out by statute. And, on that, there's been no evidence provided to indicate as much."
Mr Trump has never gone as far as Mr Giuliani in labelling Black Lives Matter a terrorist organisation, though he said the organisation "started off very badly" when demonstrators at a march in Minnesota in 2015 chanted "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," referring to police.
The group that organised that 2015 march is not affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter organisation, according to reports.
"That was the first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter," Mr Trump said in a recent interview with Axios.
The president — who often claims he has done more for black Americans than any other president with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, under whose presidency millions of black people were freed from enslavement — said he would meet with a Black Lives Matter activist if the opportunity arose, but that "nobody has asked for a meeting."
The White House could not immediately be reached for comment on this story.