Sedition Hunters
How January 6th Broke the Justice System
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- ¥2,800
発行者による作品情報
The January 6th attack is an unprecedented crime in American history. Sprawling and openly political, it can't be handled by the traditional rules and norms of law enforcement--threatening the very idea of justice and its role in society.
The attack on the Capitol building following the 2020 election was an extraordinarily large and brazen crime. Conspiracies were formed on social media in full public view, the law-breakers paraded on national television with undisguised faces, and with outgoing President Donald Trump openly cheering them on. The basic concept of law enforcement--investigators find criminals and serve justice--quickly breaks down in the face of such an event. The system has been strained by the sheer volume of criminals and the widespread perception that what they did wasn't wrong.
A mass of online tipsters--"sedition hunters"--have mobilized, simultaneously providing the FBI with valuable intelligence and creating an ethical dilemma. Who gets to serve justice? How can law enforcement still function as a pillar of civil society? As the foundations of our government are questioned, the FBI and Department of Justice are the first responders to a crisis of democracy and law that threatens to spread, and fast.
In this work of extraordinary reportage, Ryan Reilly gets to know would-be revolutionaries, obsessive online sleuths, and FBI agents, and shines a light on a justice system that's straining to maintain order in our polarized country. From the moment the police barriers were breached on January 6th, 2021, Americans knew something had profoundly changed. Sedition Hunters is the fascinating, high-stakes story of what happens next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
NBC journalist Reilly debuts with a detailed and riveting report of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot that illuminates the work of a little-known cottage industry involved in the subsequent federal investigation: the "sedition hunters." A loosely organized group of idiosyncratic individuals working "out of their home offices, from their couches, kitchen tables, bedrooms, garages," these civilian sleuths made ingenious use of video footage, Twitter posts, and other online sources to identify participants in the siege. Over the course of the coming days and months, they would then convey the identifying information to federal authorities, becoming, according to Reilly, "the most effective tool of the FBI's Jan. 6 investigation." Reilly embeds the story of the sedition hunters—their methods (using everything from Facebook to dating apps), their commitment, the community they formed, even their sense of humor (they gave suspects nicknames based on their attire: "Pippi Long Scarf"; "Tricorn Traitor")—within an almost minute-by-minute narrative of January 6. He also provides new information about some notorious participants—including the Proud Boys, Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, and Bigo Barnett, who put his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk—and reveals the frustration of Justice Department and FBI investigators with their institutional inability to arrest the entire mob. The result is a crucial new window onto a historic event.
