HARLOW: Welcome back. The attorney general preparing to testify in less than an hour on Capitol Hill. While that happens, a National Guard official will challenge Bill Barr's account of the decision and the way in which they cleared protesters in Lafayette Square last month.</s>SCIUTTO: CNN national security correspondent -- senior national security correspondent Alex Marquardt joins us now. So you have a clear contradiction here between the attorney general claims this was all peaceful, deployment of forces here, and a member of the National Guard who contradicts him.</s>ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: And what you're also going to hear is a clear contradiction on the peacefulness of those protesters. What we're going to be hearing today from Major Adam DeMarco, who was the senior officer from the D.C. National Guard in Lafayette Park on June 1st, the night of that crackdown, is a direct contradiction to what Attorney General Bill Barr and other senior officials have said in terms of whether the protesters were behaving peacefully. From Major DeMarco you're also going to hear a contradiction on the use of tear gas. He says that there was tear gas used and that he has experience with it. He's also going to say that the warning that was given to those protesters to clear out before the curfew mind you was not loud enough. What he is going to say, Jim and Poppy, is that the response, the violent crackdown on these protesters was unprovoked. I want to read you part of his prepared statement that he's going to present to the committee in the next hour. He will say, from my observation, those demonstrators, our fellow American citizens, were engaged in the peaceful expression of their First Amendment rights yet they were subjected to an unprovoked escalation and excessive use of force. Jim. Poppy.</s>SCIUTTO: We'll be watching that hearing. Hard questions need to be answered there. Alex Marquardt, thanks very much.</s>HARLOW: And the Bill Barr hearing will begin in just a few minutes. Stay right here. We'll be right back.
National Guard Major Disputes Administration.