Back in late January of this year, multiple reports noted instances where the Capitol Police appeared to be spying on GOP Congressional members. It’s by no coincidence that those reported instances align with the ongoing ‘investigation’ of the January 6th committee. Shortly after the protest at the Capitol, the CP underwent an expansion of its intelligence-gathering mission, but to what end remains questionable.
Members of the GOP demanded the Capitol Police’s actions be investigated and the USCP Inspector General has reportedly opened an investigation into these instances but I can’t help but wonder if that’s not all just for show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the internal investigation only proved that the events were ‘legit’. That could just be me being jaded by the recent findings of spying and internal investigations over the last several years.
Seeing the USCP spokesperson response to the raid on Texas Rep. Troy Nehls’s office only solidified what I was thinking:
“We do not conduct surveillance on Members, their staff, or their offices,” a spokesman for the Capitol Police told The Federalist. “The USCP does not conduct any ‘insider threats’ related surveillance of intelligence gathering on Members, staff, or visitors to the Capitol Complex.”
An interview with Rick Scott of Florida told a very different story. Scott raised alarms on Politico about the secret investigations he knew were being conducted:
“Analysts also were tasked with sifting through tax and real estate records to find out who owned the properties that lawmakers visited. For example, the unit scrutinized a meeting that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) held with donors in a private home. Analysts eyed the homeowner’s and attendees’ social media accounts, and looked for any foreign contacts they had.
“These reports are incredibly disturbing,” Scott spokesperson McKinley Lewis said in a statement. “It is unthinkable that any government entity would conduct secret investigations to build political dossiers on private Americans. The American people deserve to know what Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi knew and directed, and when. Senator Scott believes the Senate Rules Committee should immediately investigate.”
Nehls said during an interview on Fox that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is out to destroy him for being so outspoken against her Jan 6th committee. He also blasted the CP on The Federalist for the raid on his office and their questionable motive:
“In November 2021, a USCP officer entered the congressional office of Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Tex., and took a photo of a whiteboard in Nehls’ legislative office detailing various legislative plans being considered by Nehls and his staff. In a formal police report filed several days after the incident, the officer wrote that he had been conducting a routine security patrol on Saturday, November 21, and discovered that one of the doors to Nehls’ office was open.
The report claimed that the officer entered Nehls’ office and found a whiteboard that contained “suspicious writings mentioning body armor[.]” The officer reportedly took a photo of the whiteboard, which was then passed around to analysts within USCP. The following Monday, USCP dispatched three plain-clothed intelligence officers to Nehls’ office and questioned a staffer who was there about the whiteboard and the legislative proposals it contained.”
“If Capitol Police leadership had spent as much time preparing for January 6 as they spent investigating my white board, the January 6 riot never would have happened,” Nehls, a former law enforcement officer, told The Federalist. “When I was a patrol officer responding to a call, I didn’t have the time or authority to go rifling through someone’s personal papers. There are serious 4th Amendment, constitutional issues at play here.”
To demonstrate how he believes the CP’s claim that his door was ‘wide open’, Nehls shared a quick clip on Twitter that shows his door automatically closes:
This is the exact door @CapitolPolice claims their officer found “wide open” on that Saturday.
The door automatically closes. See for yourself.
How could this door be found wide open? pic.twitter.com/rQIP0N8YMR
— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) February 10, 2022
And these are just two examples of claims made that the Capitol Police might have been politically weaponized against members of Congress.
