Noted First Amendment attorney Harmeet Dhillon responded on Wednesday to former Bernie Sanders surrogate and activist Shaun King’s threat to name random Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officers until the department named the officer who shot Jacob Blake.
Dhillon, who has represented numerous high-profile clients including former Google software engineer James Damore, announced on Twitter that there were “lawyers on standby” to help any police officer unfairly doxed by King.
“To any police officers falsely named by @ShaunKing via his terrorist/extortion threats below, know that lawyers are on standby to help you teach Talcum X a lesson about defamation in court,” Dhillon tweeted.
As The Daily Wire reported on Wednesday, Shaun King, who introduced Sen. Sanders (I-VT) when he announced his 2020 presidential campaign, demanded the Kenosha Police Department publicly release the name of the officer who shot Jacob Blake. King said he would begin naming random officers in the department if they didn’t comply with his demand.
“To the Kenosha Police Department, if you do not name the officer who brutally shot Jacob Blake on Sunday, we will simply begin naming officers from your department who may or may not be him,” King tweeted. “F*** it. Your protection of his identity is unethical. What’s his name?”
He followed up that tweet by informing his followers that another police officer is “in protective custody in a hotel because people thought he shot Jacob Blake.”
“POLICE COULD END THIS RIGHT NOW. They are deliberately protecting the man who shot Jacob. What’s his name?” King continued.
King’s tweet implied more officers would face this danger if he named them.
In additional tweets, King “asked his followers to try and identify a police officer in an attempt to name the officer involved in Blake’s shooting,” The Daily Wire reported.
Blake was shot multiple times by a police officer after he struggled with officers trying to arrest him. At one point, Blake reached into the driver’s side door of the vehicle over officer objections. Police opened fire after first attempting to use a stun gun on Blake. Blake survived the shooting but is reportedly paralyzed from the waist down.
Kenosha police have said the officer who shot Blake has been suspended while the department investigates the matter.
Riots broke out in Kenosha following the shooting, with businesses such as car dealerships and furniture stores being burned to the ground along with city vehicles. On Tuesday, two people were shot and killed, and another seriously injured.
During one of the earlier nights of riots, King tweeted that he was “not going to call for peace” and would instead call “for a complete dismantling of American policing.”
“Nah. I’m not going to call for peace. We’ve tried peace. For years. Y’all don’t understand that language. We are calling for a complete dismantling of American policing. It’s NOT broken. It was built to work this way. And mayhem is the consequence. You earned it,” King tweeted on Sunday.