Lawmakers faced 'death threats' from far-right groups after Capitol riots, show leaked DC police files
The violence at the Capitol building on January 6 this year has been one of the darkest chapters in the history of American democracy. The repercussion of the incident has been wide-reaching and now documents have revealed that Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department recorded threats that were issued to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the attack. The documents were made public in a ransomware hack on the police department’s systems recently.
The Guardian reported that the documents also showed how in the months following the Capitol attack that saw five persons, including a police officer, dead, cops tightened surveillance which included monitoring hotel bookings, social media, etc. for signs of another such attack by right-wing outfits in the capital, including the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden two weeks after January 6. Angry supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on that day to protest the legislature ratifying the Electoral College victory of Biden in the 2020 election as they have been claiming that the poll was stolen from the incumbent president. The lawmakers who were present at the Capitol at the moment ran for cover as the mob carried out vandalism.
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The sensational revelation about threats comes amid the GOP resisting the formation of a 9/11-type commission to probe the January 6 attack. Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a bipartisan bill to create the investigative body despite the Republican lawmakers objecting. The vote was 252-175 with 35 GOP members backing it. The bill though will face a steep challenge in the Senate which is evenly split between the Dems and Republicans.
The police documents were stolen and published by Babuk group, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, while some were redistributed by transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets. The Guardian obtained them from the latter.
According to The Guardian: “Various outlets last week published stories based on the data showing intelligence indicating that far-right Boogaloo groups planned to attack various targets in the capital. But another collection of documents labeled “chiefs intelligence briefings” shows a broad, cross-agency effort in the days following the attack on the Capitol to identify suspects, monitor and apprehend far-right actors, and anticipate further attacks on Washington around events like the inauguration of Joe Biden and the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump”.
Cops focused on far-right activity on social media
The report added that following the attack, the attention of the law-keepers was on far-right activity on social media platforms and especially a group which calls itself Patriot Action for America. A bulletin dated January 13 also said that the group called “for others to join them in ‘storming’ state, local, and federal government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event POTUS is removed as president prior to inauguration day”.
“The bulletin also noted that the agency was facing broader challenges in monitoring far-right actors on social media websites, saying that “with the shutdown of Parler it has been a challenge to track down how activities are being planned”, and that they continued to “see more users on Gab and Telegram following the de-platforming of many accounts on more conventional social media companies”. The bulletin mentions a “possible second suspect” in the placement of pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC, who was “observed on video scouting/taking photographs in advance of the placement”, who “took a metro to the East Falls church stop and took a Lyft from there”,” The Guardian report added.
On January 12, a bulletin said that a Supreme Court agent saw “two vehicles stopped beside each other” outside the court building and in one of them, one White man was “videotaping the Capitol fence line and the court” while in the other, a passenger was “hanging out the window in order to videotape the court”. Another bulletin on January 22 said a man was arrested in Pennsylvania after “transmitting interstate threats to multiple US senators of the Democratic party”, having stated that he was “going to DC to kill people and wanted to be killed by the police”. When the Pennsylvania state police caught him, “he was in possession of a rifle, two handguns, and a large quantity of ammunition”. Another bulletin said the Metropolitan cops were working with their Capitol counterparts in probing a “a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump nears”.
The threats continued for weeks and almost a month later, yet another bulletin said that “an identified militia group member” in Texas claimed that if their “operation failed at the US Capitol”, a “back-up plan” involving the group “detonating bombs at the US Capitol during the State of the Union” prevailed.