Capitol Protestors Blocked From Crowdfunding Legal Defense Fees

Even as the U.S. capitol riot narrative was in the process of completely falling apart, the government was still using it to push an authoritarian agenda. Simultaneously, the corporate media and financial corporations were weilding their power to engage in financial censorship.

As the defendants from January 6th were slowly moving through the legal system, they were attempting to crowdfund their defense fees online. Seeing this, a group USA Today “journalists” not only successfully attempted to have certain fundraisers shutdown, but they then wrote a report bragging about it! As actual journalist Glenn Greenwald said in his article on the matter, “they went so far as to tattle to PayPal and other funding sites on two of those defendants.” The following are excerpts from the USA Today article describing exactly that:

Wednesday, a USA TODAY reporter was able to donate $10 to Biggs’ fundraiser on Our Freedom Funding, using Stripe to process the payment.

A few hours later, his campaign disappeared from Our Freedom Funding.

A USA TODAY reporter was able to make a $1 donation to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Venmo, a payment app owned by PayPal. After being alerted by USA TODAY, Venmo removed the account.

Soon a PayPal account took its place. PayPal caught that and removed it, too.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote an article in response titled Crowdfunding Legal Fees Is Not a Crime in which they highlighted “the behavior that people are demanding that these companies regulate is not, in most cases, illegal.” Glenn Greenwald (in his piece) also pointed out largely non-violent nature of the charges:

Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation.

The USA Today article actually concluded with detailing how they got Cash App to ban a “neo-nazi” after they reached out to Cash App for comment. Let’s give USA Today every benefit of the doubt: let’s say simply being a “neo-nazi” is against their ToS, and that the person they targeted is actually a “neo-nazi.” That means, in the best case, that a giant media corporation is acting as the selective policing arm of a giant financial corporation:

This month, Miller, known to his thousands of fans as Gypsy Crusader, used the messaging app Telegram to ask for donations through Cash App, which is owned by Square.

[…]

After being alerted by USA TODAY, Cash App removed the account benefiting Miller, but a new one soon popped up in its place.

By Monday morning, that account had also been removed.