The more you know! The Capitol police are immune from FOIA requests, that’s why they’re expanding nationwide. Oh, and they’re also collecting secret dossiers on citizens.

Something that sort of flew under the radar is how after January 6th the Capitol Police almost immediately launched a plan to go nationwide and open branch offices all around the country.

It seems strange that a police force meant to protect the Capitol building (which it failed to do) now needs to open branches all around the country to conduct surveillance and intelligence gathering on possible “threats” to the Capitol.

Well, the reason is pretty simple. What they are doing is mostly a violation of federal law, but they plan on keeping that a secret because they are immune from FOIA requests. Yes, because of a loophole that essentially makes them a part of congress, they are immune from disclosing documents.

So what this does is allow them to act as a spying agency on American citizens, either alone or in concert with agencies and then they never have to disclose they did any of it.

By the way, none of this is conjecture. As reported in Politico, the Capitol Police are now building intelligence dossiers on private citizens who meet with members with congress or their staff. This includes anyone ranging from lobbyists or simply constituents who have requested a meeting with their representative.

These files that are built on citizens include past social media posts, their followers or people they follow on social media, and various other background information. Mind you, this is all on people who have been suspected of no crimes, nor have they been told they are undergoing such scrutiny.

Of course, if you think this just stops at those visiting with members of congress, that seems highly unlikely.

About the same time as the Capitol Police started doing this, they also expanded to now have offices nationwide. Despite these offices being outside of the Capitol, sometimes all the way across the country, they still have the same secretive powers and immunity from FOIA requests.

So these field offices can be conducting surveillance on any citizen, completely without a warrant or just cause, and nobody will ever be able to find out about it.

It all sets up a very dangerous situation where the Capitol Police can now secretly target anyone, no warrant necessary. They can target citizens simply for their political views, which is a clear violation of civil liberties and most likely federal law.

Note: This article was originally published at The Culture Chronicles.