According to text message exchanges submitted to the Emergencies Act inquiry, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s communications director was “encouraging” journalists to investigate who the convoy protesters were before their arrival in Ottawa and where their crowd-sourced funds came from, apparently without knowing if there were any particular concerns to be unearthed.
“I’ve been encouraging journalists to take a closer look at who these people are (and where three mil comes from),” Alexander Cohen wrote to Trudeau adviser Mary-Liz Power on Jan. 25. The “three mil” is a reference to the millions in donations collected by the Freedom Convoy on GoFundMe by that date.