It has now been a full week since the mob attack on the U.S. Congress, and Capitol Police still haven’t even held a news conference to answer questions about what went wrong.
Even with a bloated post-9/11 surveillance and domestic security apparatus, federal agencies failed to prepare for the attack, and officials still haven’t addressed videos showing police officers opening barricades and welcoming people into the Capitol, taking selfies, and giving directions to rioters.
The Intercept has been digging into the links between law enforcement and white supremacists for months, long before last week’s attacks. We’re committed to uncovering the truth about what happened last Wednesday, but as a nonprofit newsroom, we count on your donations to power our team of investigative reporters.
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It is crucial that we get to the truth about what really happened last Wednesday, not just to stop it from happening again, but to make sure the attack does not lead to another wave of attacks on civil liberties like we saw after 9/11.
In fact, if law enforcement officers or leadership enabled or even assisted the attack last Wednesday, then weakening civil liberties and giving those police even more unchecked power would be the exact wrong thing to do.
And yet we are already seeing legislators use the Capitol insurrection as a justification to place more limits on legitimate protest and free speech.
The Intercept has already uncovered frighteningly widespread links between law enforcement and far-right militia groups, like the police in Kenosha who said they “appreciate” the armed vigilantes who showed up at Black Lives Matter protests. Now, we are preparing a flood of Freedom of Information Act requests, and our attorneys are standing by ready to demand the transparency required by law.
Getting to the bottom of these failures won’t be cheap or easy, and as a nonprofit media outlet, we are counting on you to help fund this effort.
