Capitol police officer suspended after ‘anti-Semitic text’ discovered at security checkpoint

A Capitol police officer has been placed on suspension following the discovery of an "anti-Semitic text" at a security checkpoint, the Washington Post reported.

What are the details?

On Sunday, a "copy of an infamous antisemitic tract" was discovered near a Capitol Hill security post, "alarming a congressional aide who viewed the document in plain sight at the checkpoint," the Post reported.

The outlet noted that the aide, later identified as Zach Fisch, chief of staff for Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y), witnessed a printed copy of the "Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion" sitting on a table inside an entryway of the Longworth House Office Building.

The text is a fiction-based account of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

By Monday, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda D. Pittman said the the officer was suspended pending an investigation into the text and why it was near the unnamed officer's work area.

"We take all allegations of inappropriate behavior seriously," Pittman said in a statement on the suspension. "Once this matter was brought to my attention, I Immediately ordered the officer to be suspended until he Office of Professional Responsibility can thoroughly investigate."

On Twitter, Fisch said that he was "extremely rattled" by the manifesto and said that the very existence of the document — and on full display — in a government building reflects "both a national security problem and a workplace safety problem."

He added, "Our office is full of people — black, brown, Jewish, queer — who have good reason to fear white supremacists. If the [Capitol Police] is all that stands between us and the mob we saw on Jan. 6, how can we feel safe?"

According to the Post, the missive — also known as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" — is a "virulent fable with a century-long provenance that purports to be the account of a meeting where Jewish masters concoct a plan for world domination."

From the Post:

The “protocols" they discuss reflect a variety of ancient antisemitic tropes, with a shadowy cabal orchestrating control of the banking system, the media and government in service of their own sinister ends.

The Anti-Defamation League calls it “a classic in paranoid, racist literature," and scholars have traced its origin to late imperial Russia, where security forces eventually circulated the tale to sow suspicion about revolutionaries challenging the czarist regime.

It has since been translated into multiple languages, fomenting antisemitic sentiment around the world — including in Germany ahead of the Nazi genocide and more recently in majority-Muslim countries. One version was published in 1920 in a U.S. newspaper owned by auto magnate Henry Ford, and it has since become a staple text of white-supremacist groups.

The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis shared a photo of the print-out on Twitter and captioned it, "A Capitol Police officer was suspended Monday after a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic tract, was found Sunday at a Longworth Building checkpoint. ... We've added a photo of the racist document, as seen in plain sight Sunday evening at the South Capitol Street entrance to LHOB."