According to two informed sources, the White House had dispatched a social media team to film and document a law enforcement operation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington, D.C. to combat crime, later creating a video that was released online.
On August 14th, the White House posted a video on X platform, capturing the arrest process of former Department of Justice employee, Sean Dunn, by the FBI agents swooping into Dunn’s apartment with firearms, handcuffing him. Prior to this, Dunn had allegedly thrown a sandwich at a federal agent and is currently facing assault charges.
The video has garnered 2.43 million views according to X platform data.
Reuters stated that they couldn’t confirm whether the individuals producing this video were White House employees, nor how many times the White House had sent people to film arrest operations since this initiative began.
A White House official told Reuters, “This is not the standard law enforcement posture; this is a necessary and appropriate action directed by the President. Of course, the White House has also been involved in promoting the significant success we’ve achieved in combating violent crime in the D.C. area.”
The official stated, “As the most transparent government in history, we will continue to share these efforts with the media and the American people.”
Sean Dunn’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, refused to comment to Reuters on the role played by the White House in filming the arrest process.
However, legal experts have cautioned that filming arrest processes could infringe on privacy rights or influence jury judgments due to pre-trial publicity.
In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled in a case that Federal Marshals and local sheriffs, in inviting the media to witness the arrest process at a suspect’s home, infringed on the suspect’s constitutional rights for the sake of publicity.
Bennett Gershman, a former New York State Prosecutor teaching at Pace University School of Law, stated, “This is essentially a means to publicize, but it does cross the line of the police’s constitutional and ethical conduct.”
(This article referenced Reuters’ reporting)