Police records show threats to kill lawmakers in wake of Capitol attack
Source: The Guardian
Police records show threats to kill lawmakers in wake of Capitol attack
Leaked files show how police stepped up surveillance efforts after January insurrections for signs of violence from far-right groups
Jason Wilson
@jason_a_w
Sun 23 May 2021 10.00 BST
Washingtons Metropolitan police department recorded threats to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, according to documents made public in a ransomware hack on their systems this month.
The documents also show how, in the month following the Capitol attack, police stepped up surveillance efforts, monitoring hotel bookings, protests in other jurisdictions, and social media for signs of another attack by far-right groups on targets in the capital, including events surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.
The revelation of the seriousness of the threats comes amid Republican opposition to forming a 9/11-style commission to investigate the January attack, which saw the Capitol roamed by looting mobs hunting for politicians and involved the deaths of five people.
The police documents were stolen and published by the ransomware attack group Babuk, and some were redistributed by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, from whom they were obtained by 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.
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Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/23/police-records-capitol-attack-lawmakers