Lost Project 2025 Bag Incites 'Weird' Police Investigation

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Daily Beast

Updated Aug. 18, 2024 4:06AM EDT / Published Aug. 17, 2024 1:11PM EDT


Journalist Malcolm Harris was having a “weird” week when he said he found an abandoned Project 2025-branded duffle bag in his Capitol Hill neighborhood. But when Harris started posting about the bag online, things reportedly got even weirder.

Harris claimed on X that he found the bag during a nighttime walk on Aug. 9, and he posted that it was full of Project 2025 swag, including a water bottle, and a “Trump Save America” emblem.

“Looks like someone from Heritage’s Young Leadership Program wasn’t excited about walking around DC with this swag bag,” he wrote in an Aug. 12 post. In another, allegedly showing the contents of the bag, he added, “Vast right-wing conspiracy starter pack.”

When Harris posted that he was thinking about turning the documents inside the bag over to a journalist, a Project 2025 staffer supposedly called the police on him and reported the bag stolen. The police showed up at his home on Tuesday.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-questioned-malcom-harris-lost-project-2025-bag-incites-weird?ref=wrap

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THIS is scary. They were planning for the Project 2025 "rollout" with P.R. packs ready to go.

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Malcolm Harris
@BigMeanInternet
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Looks like someone from Heritage's Young Leadership Program wasn't excited about walking around DC with this swag bag
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12:06 PM · Aug 12, 2024

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Malcolm Harris
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Aug 12, 2024
@BigMeanInternet
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Looks like someone from Heritage's Young Leadership Program wasn't excited about walking around DC with this swag bag
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Malcolm Harris
@BigMeanInternet
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Vast right-wing conspiracy starter pack
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12:12 PM · Aug 12, 2024

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Malcolm Harris
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Here's a story about my weird week
Will Sommer
@willsommer
New: journalist Malcolm Harris found a Project 2025 duffel bag and Heritage Foundation documents on the street. Then a Project 2025 staffer called the police on him. 👇
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2:19 PM · Aug 16, 2024

[Linda ladeewolf]

1. Why?

Would the police even care?

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Speculating

that whoever it belonged to maybe jumped into an Uber (or hopped into some other transport), forgot the bag, maybe went back later and found it gone, saw it posted about online (or was alerted to that posting), and called the cops about it being "stolen" (after tracking down this journalist guy).

Just guessing.

[ret5hd]

3. but if the Uber itself was stolen...

they wouldn’t even come to take a report and would tell the owner to file with his insurance.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Which in this case

is probably why it "made the news".

Here is an excerpt from the referenced WaPo reporter who did a follow-up story - https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/08/16/project-2025-dc-duffel-bag/

He found a Project 2025 duffel bag. Then police showed up at his house.

By Will Sommer
August 16, 2024 at 2:10 p.m. EDT

(snip)

But Harris’s plans for the bag would soon run into D.C. police. After seeing Harris’s tweets, a woman who describes herself on LinkedIn as a Project 2025 staffer called the police and filed a complaint for theft, according to a police report obtained by The Post. In the account she gave to police, the bag disappeared in the late afternoon of Friday, Aug. 9, when she and another Heritage staffer “left a bag in a parking space while getting into their car,” in a public area a block from Heritage’s headquarters on the 200 block of Massachusetts Avenue NE. When they returned to get it 30 minutes later, the bag was gone.

Harris and the Heritage staffer who complained to police differ on when the bag was taken. In the police report, the Heritage staffer claims the bag was taken from the parking spot a little more than an hour earlier, between 5 and 5:30 p.m. Harris provided The Post with map app data that demonstrates he was at the corner several blocks away where he claimed to have found it around 6:45 p.m. that day. One or both of their accounts may be wrong, but the time difference also raises the possibility that an unknown third party took the bag from the parking space, carried it a few blocks, was perhaps unimpressed with the book about Israel and the Altoids tin inside, and dropped it on the corner, where Harris later found it. The police report makes no mention of surveillance videos or witnesses who saw Harris take the bag from the parking spot. The officer who went to Harris’s house claims in the police report that the author “spontaneously admitted that he was in possession of the bag and that he would not return it.”

(snip)

“If I talk to the police without a lawyer, I’m in way more trouble with my family,” Harris said. On Thursday morning, after learning more about the ongoing police investigation, Harris decided to end the dispute himself. With his wife and 7-month-old baby (who was dressed in a police-abolition onesie), Harris walked to Heritage’s office to return the bag. At no point in the process, Harris said, had anyone from Heritage just emailed him to ask for the bag back, but he was eager to be rid of it.

(snip)

Inside Heritage’s lobby, Harris and a man who identified himself as Heritage’s head of security sorted through the items in the bag, so the man could give Harris an itemized receipt that he hoped would put the police case to rest. The security chief said he didn’t need to verify the bag’s contents, given that the internship documents inside were not exactly “the keys to the kingdom.” In a statement to The Post, a Heritage spokesperson said they were glad the bag had been turned over. “We are pleased that our intern’s property was returned and hope that in the future our neighbors will exercise basic decency so that the police need not be involved,” the statement said.

(snip)

Project 2025 duffel bag, found by Malcolm Harris. (Will Sommer/The Washington Post)

[Clouds Passing]

25. The Heritage Foundation does not deserve to have the Liberty Bell as it's logo

[usonian]

27. Yes they do. It's cracked.

[Clouds Passing]

30. I thought about that for a split second

[Zoomie1986]

4. Technically...

Like it or not, this guy took something that didn't belong to him. That's called theft. I don't know about your parents, but mine taught me before I went to kindergarten that if we find something like this in public, then first see if anything identifies the owner so we can contact them. Or take the item to the police.

What I find troubling is that he picked this up at all. The more concerning feature of any abandoned bag is that it's a potential bomb threat, and to call the police to investigate. Especially on Capitol Hill.

[CTyankee]

6. Was it left on purpose? Inquiring minds want to know!

just asking...

[hunter]

8. The cops in my part of the world would ask, in so many words, "Why are you bothering us with this?"

There would have to be a severed head, cash, drugs, a gun or, as you say, a bomb in the bag to interest them.

Our police department is chronically underfunded and understaffed (according to them) and they don't pay much attention to the small stuff. They might ask you to file a report on their website or, if you don't have internet access, to come to the police station.

Going to the police station is a trip. The clerks sit behind bullet proof glass. You take a number and wait until you are called. This can take a long time and you'll be sitting or standing shoulder to shoulder with all sorts of interesting people. I have seen people get ahead in line by fighting, bleeding, having seizures, etc.

I've always felt much more comfortable living in places like this than I do in places where the police are always in everyone's business and claim to be your friends. I grew up in a place like that. The actual purpose of the police there was to keep the city 99% white and to cover up any dirty dealings that might tarnish the city's reputation as a "safe" bedroom community.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Except he says he found it at a spot where people leave things for other to take for free

From the WP article:

At the corner of Sixth and E Streets NE, Harris passed a low-set ledge where he says people often leave free, unwanted items. (As Harris reenacted his discovery of the bag at the corner a week later, someone was giving away a succulent.)

It seems to me like the Project 2025 staffers left the bag at a parking spot by mistake, someone else saw it was in the way and moved it to the ledge, and Harris thought it was unwanted.

[AverageOldGuy]

28. BINGO!!!

My daughter lives on Capitol Hill at 6th and XXX NE, 3 short blocks away from where the bag was found. When visiting with her, I walk daily around the area and it's common for people to leave stuff they don't want on the sidewalk, free for the taking.

I've seen everything on the sidewalks, free for the taking -- dishes, clothing, shoes, baby clothes, a very good baseball glove, lamps, cooking utensils, books, tote bags, a really nice Coach genuine leather folio (which is now on my desk) . . . . .

[reACTIONary]

20. Technically, like it or not....

.... it isn't theft. It was 'abandoned in place,' as if thrown into the trash, and therefore ownerless.

[Scrivener7]

22. Really? Your parents said if you find a swag bag, you should bring it to the police

immediately? I assume that is so the police can start a swag investigation?

Interesting parents.

[orthoclad]

29. I was taught to clean up litter.

If it was sitting in the public space, then it's litter.

Some possibly drunken intern left it?

[Scrivener7]

7. When you're trying to turn America into Gilead, you gotta be more careful in the Ubers

if you don't want everyone to know about your evil, weird, creepy plans.

[hunter]

9. What's in the eye drops and Altoids tin?

Haven't we heard some of these young "conservatives" bragging about the parties?

[reACTIONary]

21. Don't know about the eye drops, but the altoids tin...

... is an insider thing. The jerk who ran the 2025 program always had a tin of altoids on his desk.

[Talitha]

10. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

If there was cash, etc in the bag then yes, I'd have handed it over to authorities. Someone left it out in the open and came back 30 minutes later, expecting to find it waiting for them?
Good luck with that.

The bag was full of trash.
The owner was a litterbug, not a victim of theft.

[PSPS]

12. What's with the Walgreens cap?

[Mr.Bill]

15. That's a Washington Nationals baseball cap.

Probably the person who put the bags together was a Nationals fan. Or maybe whoever dropped the bag was a Nationals fan and put his hat in the bag.

[Conjuay]

16. thanks,

I thought Walgreens, then I thought ‘Walz’, then I thought of the great cosmos,(Milky Way) and then I stopped thinking at all!

[Mr.Bill]

17. Well, with that train of thought,

you probably would have gotten the right answer eventually.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

13. I'm not seeing anything scary

A couple of books no MAGAt will ever read; a couple of business cards; a pen; a stupid picture of Felon 45 from 40 years ago; a pin; a water bottle; a small tin of Altoids; a folder and a red hat with a stylized "W" on it (for "weird"?) inside a cheap looking duffle bag.

That doesn't scare me.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. It is

"scary" in that they have a whole PROMOTIONAL thing already in motion, with "PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT" stitched on the bag as well.

I.e., it became more than a 900+-page "book" about their plan but a whole pre-packaged "brand", ready to go.

[Think. Again.]

26. ⬆⬆⬆THIS⬆⬆⬆

[tonekat]

14. Nazi Youth lost their Swag Bag

How soulless do you have to be to work for the "Heritage" Foundation?

[Evolve Dammit]

18. Is the spray inhaler Narcan??

[jvill]

23. Heritage could have emailed, but choose to be huge dicks. And then blame others. Natch..

…

[FakeNoose]

24. I guess Malcolm Harris should be thankful he's not Black

... otherwise an innocent situation like this would mean jailtime.