Jason Leopold reports:

The chief of the Capitol Police and its top intelligence officer personally approved permits for six demonstrations to be held on Jan. 6, 2021, despite signs that one of the applications was filed for an organization that didn’t exist and that five of them were a proxy for a group staging large, violent protests across the country.

Capitol Police documented concerns that organizers had attempted to conceal their affiliation with Ali Alexander, the right-wing activist behind the group Stop the Steal, in a secret effort to coordinate their protests against the results of the 2020 presidential election. Despite those concerns, and COVID-19 policies that capped demonstrations at 50 people each, the Capitol Police force’s intelligence assessment said there were “no plans for participants to enter the buildings” and noted “no adverse intelligence related to the upcoming event.” It assessed “the Level of Probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests to occur” during the demonstration “as Highly Improbable.”

The six closely guarded permits, along with intelligence assessments about the organizations, were obtained by BuzzFeed News. They shed new light on what Capitol Police knew about threats to the Capitol leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection and provide rare insight into the operations of the Capitol Police, which, as an arm of Congress, is not subject to Freedom of Information laws.

The release of the documents also marks a significant victory for BuzzFeed News, which filed a lawsuit last February after the Capitol Police declined a request for the permits. Attorney Jeffrey Light cited the “common law right of access” to public records, which maintains that the public has a basic right to review the records of its government that are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The Capitol Police opted not to fight the case. [Continue reading…]