The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) pre-planned to euthanize a domesticated squirrel and raccoon owned by online personality Mark Longo before conducting a search warrant on his residence last October, Judicial Watch has learned as a result of filing a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit.
On October 30, 2024, Longo’s home was raided by law enforcement officers with the Department of Environmental Conservation and Bureau of Wildlife, where Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon were seized and later euthanized for rabies testing.
The raid on Longo’s home and seizure of the animals drew national attention at the time. It was even acknowledged by the likes of billionaire Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, and President Donald Trump as they expressed outrage over what they described as government overreach.
On Tuesday, Judicial Watch announced it received 163 pages of records from the New York State DEC in a FOIL lawsuit, including an incident report dated October 24, 2024, in which it claimed that Longo’s animals were reported to DEC via “multiple complaints…that were posted to several social media outlets.”
On October 29, one day before the raid, the officer who authored the incident report and assisted in the raid on Longo’s home said any animals seized during the raid would be euthanized and decapitated for rabies testing.
At the time of the raid, Peanut allegedly bit a wildlife biologist who attempted to seize him inside Longo’s home, however, there are conflicting details about whether the bite broke the skin or not as the incident report says that the latex glove of the wildlife biologist who seized Peanut was not broken while a separate “Rabies Report Form” claimed that the “skin was broken” of the individual.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the documents detailing the raid on Longo’s home and seizure of the animals “show an abuse of power where 12 officers were sent in on a raid to seize Peanut and Fred, who the bureaucrats decided beforehand would be killed.”
“These documents show the killing of Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon was the result of pure government abuse and insanity,” Fitton added.
Longo, days after the raid last year, said the five-hour-long search of his home felt as if he were being treated as a “terrorist” or “drug dealer.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
