Who Benefits When Authorities Disappear Social Media Posts After a High-Profile Crime? – PJ Media

It happens every time there’s a high-profile crime. Law enforcement officials, in collusion with social media companies, surreptitiously disable the social media profiles of suspects, leaving Americans in the dark about their motives and political leanings. 

The question is why. And who benefits? 

The most recent example is Wess Roley, 20, who is accused of starting a fire in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Sunday so he could ambush first responders. Two firefighters died in the attack, and a third was critically wounded. Roley was later found dead on Canfield Mountain. It’s not clear whether his gunshot wound was self-inflicted or the result of a firefight with police. The Kootenai Sheriff’s office, as per usual when these things happen, has not released a motive in the shooting. 

Also, as per usual, his social media profiles have been scrubbed. The gatekeepers have decided that the public will not see his posts unless and until they decide to release them. Most likely, that won’t happen until they are forced to release the files as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That could take months, or even years. 

The standard arguments for removing content created by suspects in major crimes are that leaving the accounts intact would encourage copycat crimes or incite violence. I asked Grok, X’s AI, about this and learned that the platform has a “general practice of not publicly detailing individual content moderation actions unless legally compelled or highly publicized.” I asked the same questions of Meta AI and was given the runaround rather than a straight answer. (My previous requests for information on how these policies work went unanswered by Facebook and X representatives.) 

Instead of transparency, what now happens in the wake of a major crime is that, after social media profiles are scrubbed, the internet immediately goes to work creating fake profiles that circulate and are viewed by thousands or sometimes millions of users, as happened after Matthew Crooks tried to murder Donald Trump. There are also multiple fake profiles for Roley floating around social media today. 

How does that help anything? 

Investigative journalist and self-described “FOIA Queen” Sarah Fields described what she discovered about Roley in an X post: 

The suspect in the sh00ting that k*lled two Idaho firefighters and injured another is 20-year-old Wess Roley.

– He has a prior arrest for as*ault in 2024. This incident involved him allegedly attacking a woman with a knife, for which he was charged with felony as*ault with a… pic.twitter.com/JT0hvMheal

— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) June 30, 2025

Roley’s social media activity, particularly on X, revealed disturbing content. He posted about his disdain for authority figures, including police and firefighters, and expressed radical views. His posts included threats and general hostility toward society, which raised concerns among those who followed him. Additionally, he was known to have made threats against his family, leading to a no-contact order being issued against him.

Fields told PJ Media. “I believe that the public has the right to know. I think we all have a right to know all of the factors that lead to someone committing these heinous acts.” She added that scrubbing the profiles “gives the FBI, media, etc., the opportunity to create a narrative about the situation. Which they are already doing.” 

Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if something like this happened in the wake of a major crime event? 

1. Law enforcement identifies a suspect.
2. Law enforcement tracks down the suspect’s social media profiles and requests that the platforms preserve the content and ensure that it cannot be manipulated. 
3. Law enforcement verifies which social media profiles belong to the suspect, allowing fake profiles to be immediately debunked. 

End of story. Instead, we have to play hide-and-seek and hope that we eventually uncover the truth by FOIA or by lawsuit. 

And it’s not just social media. Remember how authorities fought tooth and nail to avoid releasing the manifesto of Nashville Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale? After a flurry of lawsuits from media organizations and public transparency advocates, we finally got to see what was in it. 

One of the plaintiffs who sued the FBI was the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which reported: 

On March 27, 2023, a transgender shooter entered The Covenant School in Nashville and tragically killed three nine-year-old students and three adults—an administrator, substitute teacher, and a custodian. Law enforcement officers bravely entered the building and killed the shooter.

Our client requested a copy of the manifesto from the FBI through a formal FOIA request, which was denied by the Biden-era FBI. WILL sued, and after FBI Director Kash Patel was confirmed, settlement negotiations began to resolve the matter. The FBI then released 120 pages of the manifesto and settled the case with WILL.

Whom did the delays benefit? It arguably benefited the trans lobby, which had an interest in covering up the story, and Joe Biden’s flailing re-election campaign. But the public? Not so much. 

Now that Kash Patel is in charge of the FBI, it’s time to stop scrubbing the records and hiding the backgrounds of these sickos. Full transparency. Now.