Supremes mull unveiling ‘Stop the Steal’ Seattle cops
Plus campaign cash news and some recommended reading
Free speech might not be free for four Seattle police officers suing to keep their names from the public record and away from January 6’s place in the history books.
When rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election of President Joe Biden, a pair of off-duty cops with the Seattle Police Department were among the mob who broke into the building. Four of their co-workers rallied outside with the “Stop the Steal” crowd.
The former two officers who trespassed on the Capitol were fired at the behest of the SPD’s Office of Police Accountability, whose 21-page report was prompted by video footage of the men that was making the rounds on social media at the time. The report noted one officer refused to surrender any documents—texts, photographs, etc.—to investigators.
None of the officers were ever officially named or criminally charged in any court, save for the court of public opinion after their names and faces surfaced on the internet. Attorney Sam Sueok of the King County Department of Public Defense was among the inquiring minds who wanted to dig deeper into the whole affair. Sueok filed related public records requests from the City of Seattle. The four John Does still working for the SPD sued to stop those requests from being fulfilled outright, bringing the case all the way to the Supremes.
So why are the cops suing to shield their names from the court record, if their faces are already swirling the web? In a state Supreme Court hearing Tuesday, all parties involved in the case agreed that each officer is still anonymous in the court record. This decision means, technically, no Jan. 6 videos archived on Reddit or Facebook are much more than water cooler gossip without an official record to match faces to names—or hard evidence for lawsuits down the line.
Attorney Blair Russ argued as much on behalf of the anonymous plaintiffs, claiming the officers would spend the rest of their careers fending off harassment and intimidation if their names were released. The Supremes aired some doubts on that front: After all, shouldn’t the John Doe quartet have gotten the message Jan. 6 was a public event from the sea of TV cameras at the U.S. Capitol that day?
Yes, people protest to make a clear political statement—a public one, at that, Russ argued. This shouldn’t mean protesters are walking, talking public records. That argument seemed to win over at least one ear on the court.
Justice Helen Whitener went out on a limb to suggest the right to protest should come with the right to anonymity—from public disclosure, that is. Protesting may mean being seen, but not necessarily identified. Relinquishing the right to shield your legal name by protesting, she said, essentially chills the free speech rights of protesters who risk their jobs.
Neil Martin Fox, the attorney representing Sueok, argued the contrary at Tuesday’s hearing. The Seattle police officers aren’t the same as ordinary protestors, he said. The officers are police who work on taxpayers’ dime and must enforce the law without bias.
While Fox didn’t deny cops are as entitled to their First Amendment rights as the rest of us, he did suggest Jan. 6 was an extraordinary case, and emphasized the word “insurrection.” Fox argued that attending the event was enough to compromise the officers’ oaths.
What the Supremes seemed to take a greater interest in on Tuesday was the public interest public records disclosure should have. Russ reiterated that the records requests that spurred the case were based on unsubstantiated misconduct. There is some precedent for that argument. The Supremes of 2008 ruled that sexual misconduct allegations against K-12 teachers from the Seattle, Bellevue, and Federal Way school districts were exempt from disclosure unless they were substantiated.1
We’ll keep our eyes peeled on this case as it moves through Supremes World. It could have big implications for our brothers and sisters in the news who pull records requests every day, plus government transparency, at large, which we never get enough of in Olympia.
TG
A campaign cash roundup
With the August primary just around the corner, candidates and political action committees playing in this year’s elections now have to report contributions every week, which generates an interesting flow of campaign cash news. Some recent highlights:
The Northwest Regional Organizing Coalition, the political arm of the Laborers’ International Union in these parts, is cutting some big checks. The PAC sent $50,000 to the Jackson Legacy Fund, which backs moderate Democrats and has close ties to state Sen. Mark Mullet, the business-friendly Democrat running for governor.
It also shipped $50K each to the Washington State Democratic Party and the Truman Fund, the soft-money2 PAC controlled by majority Democrats in the state House.
The Laborers do heavy construction work—think putting giant pipes underground—and they like to see a steady supply of both public and private-sector projects in the pipeline.
The GOPAC Election Fund, a national PAC that invests in bench-building on the Republican side of politics, sent $75K to the Leadership Council, the soft-money PAC controlled by Senate Republicans.
The Reagan Fund, the soft-money PAC controlled by minority Republicans in the House, got $20K from the Washington Food Industry Association and $10K from the Association of Washington Business.
Jobs PAC, which is part of the business-focused Enterprise Washington network of PACs, got $75K from the Washington State Dental PAC. The dentists are ever-vigilant in Olympia for proposals to allow dental assistants and technicians to do work traditionally limited to folks who put DMD behind their names.
Koch Industries, a name-brand donor on the right in national circles, sent $25K to Main Street Matters to Washington, a PAC created by the Building Industry Association of Washington to push its ballot initiative that would roll back various restrictions on the use of natural gas for heating and cooking. Speaking of that initiative, Paul spotted some petitioners working the Point Defiance ferry line in Tacoma this week. The campaign has just over a week left to get the measure on the November ballot.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12377d27-e00e-4783-b361-30c80bac5390_2086x2086.jpeg)
Former House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox sent $100K from his campaign surplus account to the House Republican Organizing Committee, the hard-money PAC controlled by his successor, current Majority Leader Drew Stokesbary. Expect that money, which is part of the legal money-laundering scheme we think of as the surplus shuffle, to wind up competitive races around the state.
Speaking of that shuffle, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee sent $62K to Rep. Greg Cheney, who’s trying to hold onto the Clark County Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Ann Rivers. The district was substantially redrawn in 2021 and is now considered a target for Democrats.
The PAC also sent $55K to Republican Marcia Kelbon, who is taking on Democratic Rep. Mike Chapman for the Olympic Peninsula Senate seat currently held by Democrat Kevin Van De Wege, who’s running for Lands Commissioner. Republicans eye the rural 24th District hungrily, but so far, the Democratic voters of Sequim and Port Townsend have kept it blue. Chapman’s doing a little shuffling of his own. He sent $125K from his House surplus account to the Washington Senate Democratic Campaign.3 If he looks vulnerable after the primary, expect most of that money to come back to him in a big chunk for the fall campaign.
PQ
Recommended reading:
A new tax for housing may be headed to the Seattle ballot
David Kroman has an update in the Seattle Times on a forthcoming ballot measure to tax the city’s high rollers to bankroll social housing.
The tax would fall on employers who pay people more than a million bucks a year. The money would pay for apartments rented out by local governments or nonprofits for low-income tenants. Voters green-lit a social housing developer in 2023 but didn’t include a way to foot the bill.
It’s now up to the Seattle City Council to place the measure on the ballot. Should it choose to withhold its seal of approval the measure could be pushed out to next February when the White House is no longer drawing voters to the ballot box.
On the state level, the Legislature has looked at funding social housing year after year but no proposal has come close to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk. One such proposal from Sen. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, died this past session.
TG
Irksome Errata
In last Friday’s edition, we mistakenly listed Sen. Keith Wagoner, R-Sedro Woolley, among a list of “former senators,” who voted against a bill to shield the Legislature from the records law. Wagoner still serves as the Senate Republican Caucus Whip. On Monday, we dropped a digit and thus underplayed King County Councilman Dave Upthegrove’s fundraising in the race for Commissioner of Public Lands. Upthegrove had about $380,000 on hand.
Thanks for your attention. This is the free midweek edition of The Washington Observer, an independent newsletter on politics, government, and the influence thereof in Washington State. It’s made possible by our paid subscribers. If you’re not among them, go ahead and hit the button to get access to subscriber-only editions and the warm glow of supporting independent journalism.
Meet the newest member of the Sunshine Committee
Sara’s dog Fauci is committed to soaking up the sunbeams, so she signed up for Washington’s Sunshine Committee! That’s what it’s about, right?
That case stemmed from a lawsuit from our sister and brothers in news at The Seattle Times.
Such contributions can’t be given directly to candidates but can be used for independent expenditure campaigns and party-building activities.
This bank shot allows Chapman to duck the onerous task of asking all his donors for permission to use their money to run for a different office. Theoretically, the money going to the party can’t be earmarked, but…