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Lessons from reporting on the Trump assassination attempt

Spotlight PA, ProPublica, and the Butler Eagle recently published a collaborative investigation into the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Our reporting revealed that the July 13 shooting resulted from existing vulnerabilities in the process the Secret Service uses to secure campaign events. The story focused on the Secret Service rather than authorities in Pennsylvania.

But as I filed records requests to local police departments while reporting, I learned about a serious obstacle to getting access to police-recorded footage in Pennsylvania.

Frequent readers of this newsletter might be familiar with the Right-to-Know Law, Pennsylvania’s version of the federal Freedom of Information Act. It provides the public with access to government documents.

When police officers start recording video using body-worn or vehicle dashboard cameras, however, the resulting footage is subject to a different law: Act 22 of 2017.

Just weeks after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2017 ruled that dash- and body-camera footage are public records, the legislature passed a law all but invalidating the victory that transparency advocates had fought for years to achieve.

Act 22 requires requests for police footage to be made within 60 days of the recorded event, and to be delivered either in person or via certified mail. And it puts full discretion on whether footage is released in the hands of the police agency, making such releases very rare. So rare that an Office of Open Records official once asked me if I had ever obtained police-recorded footage. He had yet to hear a success story.

Few people know how to file such requests — and apparently, few local governments know how to handle them.

I mailed out six Act 22 requests to departments we either knew or suspected provided security for the Trump rally during my reporting. Many departments denied my requests, citing the Right-to-Know Law — a completely different and irrelevant statute.

This response left me confused and unsure how to proceed.

While I can appeal a right-to-know request to the statewide Office of Open Records, an Act 22 denial can only be appealed in the local Court of Common Pleas, a potentially expensive and difficult step for most newsrooms.

Ultimately, one police department sent us footage: Butler Township. Two weeks after initially denying my Act 22 request (and erroneously citing the Right-to-Know Law in the denial), the local agency changed course and provided 12 videos showing the minutes before and after Thomas Crooks clambered atop a building and shot former President Trump.

Those videos became the pillar of my story about the shooting, and taught me a lesson. Always request the footage — even if the law makes it difficult! —Danielle Ohl, Spotlight PA

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