The Shadow State: When Protest Becomes a Crime Court documents reveal that Department of Homeland Security officers infiltrated meetings in churches, schools, and parks to monitor activist chat groups and compile names of people who attended gatherings as part of Operation Puppet Master, a federal surveillance operation in Minnesota targeting progressive groups and unions.
The investigation was driven by politics, not criminal conduct, according to defense attorney Kevin Riach.
This is evident from the documents, which show that agents secretly infiltrated meetings, monitoring discussions of constitutionally protected protests.