Louisiana State Police are being sued by a Harvard lecturer over their alleged refusal to release a list of anti-Trump petitioners that they had. He says it originated from a neo-Nazi website, and was named “Antifa list.”
Harvard Law School lecturer Thomas Frampton is suing Louisiana State Police (LSP) over its alleged failure to release a list of thousands of citizens who had signed a petition against US President Donald Trump. According to the lawsuit, the list comes from a hoax roster that originally showed up a year ago on neo-Nazi conspiracy theories website, 8Chan, WGNO reports.
The list was discovered by New Orleans civil-rights attorney William Most. Frampton is now taking action against the LSP’s Baton Rouge police department on his behalf.
The LSP’s alleged implication with neo-Nazi groups drew the ire of the public, some of whom went as far as to accuse the “racist” police force of taking orders from white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan.
News of the lawsuit prompted others to call for the State Police to be “abolished” altogether.
Others suggested there may be some more suspicious reasons for the police not wanting the documents in the public domain.
The whole case unraveled when Most demanded in May that LSP release thousands of internal emails containing hateful and racist communication, including phrases such as “white genocide.”
LSP initially delayed the release but after a few months relented and handed out 64 emails.
It was then that Most spotted a document called “full list of antifa.docx,” which had reportedly been circulated among the department’s most senior officials, as well as local enforcement ones.
The attorney requested the department give him the list in question, but LSP refused on the grounds that it would “compromise” an ongoing investigation which was expected to result in arrests. The police also hesitated for fear the document would blow the cover of their “confidential informant,” Most claimed.