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Hundreds of counterprotesters, including Antifa, confronted a group of white-nationalist demonstrators Sunday at the so-called “Unite the Right II” march toward the White House — and many pushed back as officers tried to clear the area in the evening, triggering scuffles.

A passing thunderstorm forced the far-right demonstrators to break down their rally stage in Lafayette Park near the White House prematurely, but as police escorted them from the area, reports of Antifa resistance emerged. Some 200 anti-fascists, many of them wearing black masks, confronted police about a half-mile from the White House as officers shoved them back, The Associated Press reported.

Other reports suggested counterprotesters hurled fireworks as police tried to clear the way for “Unite the Right” activists to leave the park. Eventually, many of the Antifa members packed in to vans as police escorted them away.

At a news conference Sunday evening, Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham said one man was arrested in connection with the protest. Newsham identified the man as 44-year-old John Mulligan of Pennsylvania and said he pepper-sprayed another man in the face at approximately 5 p.m., around the time the white nationalist demonstrators left Lafayette Park. The chief said Mulligan was carrying a slingshot, stones and large pieces of glass when he was apprehended.

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Newsham praised his officers for showing “professionalism” and “class” when dealing with protesters on both sides and said “we did not see any violent confrontations that we have seen in other cities.”

Hours earlier, the white nationalist rally participants — a couple dozen in all, according to estimates — gathered at a subway station in northern Virginia and traveled into the nation's capital via train before disembarking in Foggy Bottom near the George Washington University campus. Police officers cleared a path through the counterprotesters for the group to march through on their way to Lafayette Park outside the White House. The far-right rallygoers marched in the middle of the street, surrounded by a phalanx of police, while counter-protesters heckled them from the sidewalks on either side.