Seattle officials deliberately 'purged' thousands of CHOP-related text messages, despite 'legal obligation' to retain them - federal judge

Seattle officials deliberately 'purged' thousands of CHOP-related text messages, despite 'legal obligation' to retain them - federal judge | 24 Jan 2023 | Several former and current Seattle, Washington, officials who were in office during the 2020 Capitol Hill Organized Protest or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone -- better known as CHOP or CHAZ -- deliberately "purged" evidentiary text messages related to that event, a federal judge has determined. As a result, the jury that will eventually consider a lawsuit about that event may presume that the missing text messages were "unfavorable" to the city and to those officials...But physical violence was not the only harm CHOP caused. Businesses located within the occupied territory suffered serious injury to their bottom line, to say nothing of the integrity of their buildings, because protesters refused to allow employees and clients to access them. More than a dozen of those businesses quickly filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that officials had supported CHOP by providing various accommodations to the protesters.