Under current law, the State Department can designate foreign organizations as terrorist groups. But the U.S. has no domestic terrorism statute, and the FBI uses other legal authorities to prosecute domestic terrorism here. State Department spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment on whether Foggy Bottom was involved in the president’s move…

“There currently exists no legal authority to designate domestic organizations as terror organizations, and any such designation would raise serious First Amendment concerns,” said Mary McCord, who heads Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and who formerly helmed the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

McCord said she found the last sentence of Barr’s statement — quoted above — to be troubling, since the attorney general did not cite evidence or intelligence connecting antifa or others on the left to the violence.