Last updated on April 18th, 2021 at 08:36 pm
Trump used the DEA to conduct covert surveillance on George Floyd protesters in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Albuquerque.
CREW obtained the emails detailing the Trump spying campaign:
The Drug Enforcement Administration conducted “covert surveillance†on people protesting the killing of George Floyd last summer in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Albuquerque, according to emails obtained by CREW. The operations involved the use of undercover DEA agents to “infiltrate†protests, social media monitoring, and aerial surveillance by the DEA Air Wing.
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Justice Department leadership authorized the surveillance efforts in May 2020, per a DEA memorandum revealed last year by BuzzFeed News. The decision—which significantly expanded the DEA’s law enforcement authority nationwide for 14 days—was decried by members of Congress and civil liberties advocates as an invasion of First Amendment rights.
Trump’s tactics were straight out of the 1960s and the way the government spied on civil rights and anti-war protesters.
Trump falsely claimed that his campaign was spied on by the government when he was a presidential candidate, but as president, he did not hesitate to use the government to spy on African-Americans and others protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police.
If the Trump administration had placed one-tenth of the effort they used to spy on racial justice protesters into conducting surveillance of white supremacists, the attack on the Capitol could have been prevented.
Republicans try to say that they are the party of Lincoln, but Donald Trump keeps popping up to remind everyone that they are the party of racism.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
