The Intercept Sues to Release 911 Recordings From Trump Rally Shooting
The Intercept filed a lawsuit on Monday to force county officials in Pennsylvania to release 911 recordings from the July rally in which former President Donald Trump was injured in an apparent assassination attempt. Despite the public's compelling" interest in these materials, Butler County refuses to hand them over without a court order.
Almost two months after the July 13 shooting, questions remain about the timeline of law enforcement officials' response and coordination, including when rally attendees first alerted them to the gunman climbing onto a nearby roof. Police from Butler Township released body camera footage showing their frantic real-time response from multiple perspectives.
But Butler County insists that releasing the 911 calls might jeopardize investigations into what happened.
Simply put, there is no accountability without public access," said Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. The county should reverse its denial so that the nation has a better understanding of what happened and can work to prevent similar attacks in the future."
Soon after the shooting, The Intercept submitted a request to Butler County for copies of recorded 911 calls under Pennsylvania's right-to-know law. Multiple other outlets requested the same materials, including reporters from Scripps News and NBC News, who also filed lawsuits against the county on Monday.
These records can show us what the crowd saw on that day and how long it took law enforcement to respond," said Pennsylvania attorney Joy Ramsingh, who is representing The Intercept in the lawsuit against Butler County. It's important for the press to be able to go straight to the source of these authentic public records, instead of obtaining filtered facts through polished statements made by public officials." Ramsingh is also representing Scripps and NBC in their lawsuits for the 911 records.
Butler County denied all three outlets' requests on identical grounds, citing part of the Pennsylvanian public records statute that generally exempts 911 recordings from disclosure.
It is the policy of Butler County only to release 911 audio under court order or by subpoena," a clerk wrote in an email to The Intercept. Therefore, the request is denied."
Another crucial provision in Pennsylvania law, however, gives Butler County the discretion to release the recordings if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in nondisclosure."
The Intercept's lawsuit claims Butler County's refusal to use this discretion qualifies as bad faith" under state law.
It is difficult to fathom a case where the public interest in disclosure is more obvious, given the political, historical, and national significance of this assassination attempt," reads The Intercept's court petition. The voting public, regardless of political affiliation, has a keen interest in learning more about the events that transpired at the Butler rally and the government's response to the same."
In July, The Intercept appealed Butler County's denial to the state Office of Open Records. Despite finding there was a compelling argument concerning the heightened public interest in the records at issue here," the OOR sided with Butler County, claiming OOR lacked the authority to overrule Butler County's decision to withhold the 911 tapes.
The Intercept's lawsuit claims OOR was wrong about its own authority too.
The entire nation has a right to know how the government responded to this threat against a former president," said The Intercept's general counsel, David Bralow. And The Intercept takes its responsibility to ensure public accountability seriously."
The post The Intercept Sues to Release 911 Recordings From Trump Rally Shooting appeared first on The Intercept.