Damning revelations in federal documents obtained by a conservative watchdog group show the Biden administration’s Justice Department sought a “federal hook” so they could investigate and criminally charge parents protesting school policies related to COVID, transgenderism, critical race theory, and other issues.
Career attorneys in the DOJ argued in the released correspondence that such a move was legally baseless and would trample the First Amendment rights of parents.
The government documents, obtained by America First Legal, “conclusively prove” a memo from former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “mobilized the full force of the federal government’s firepower against concerned parents—not to protect schools, but to silence dissent” and the ensuing investigation was “politically orchestrated and coordinated with the Biden White House,” America First Legal charged Friday.
The AFL in an extensive release on its website reported:
These never-before-seen documents—uncovered only because of AFL’s relentless efforts over the past three and a half years—expose not only the Biden White House’s involvement in pushing a weaponized DOJ, but also strong dissent from careers within the Department’s Civil Rights Division, who warned that there was no federal authority or legal basis to target these parents in the first place because their speech is protected by the First Amendment.
The photocopies of emails and documents involved were also published on the website.
In one letter obtained by AFL, Kevin Chambers, an aide to the attorney general, wrote to a colleague on Oct. 1, 2021: “We’re aware; the challenge here is finding a federal hook. But WH has been in touch about whether we can assist in some form or fashion.”
Fox News reported that Garland issued a directive on Oct. 4, 2021, that directed the FBI to assist local law enforcement partners with a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school administrators.
Garland told a congressional hearing soon thereafter that he had given the directive after the National School Board Association (NSBA) sent a letter to the White House that had asked the Biden administration to investigate parents displaying threatening behavior at school board meetings as possible “domestic terrorists,” the news network reported.
The NSBA later retracted the request.
Career DOJ lawyers were concerned about any legal effort to take action on that letter, documents show.
One DOJ attorney wrote to colleagues in an email on October 3, 2021:
I read the letter from NSBA, and looked at the links for a handful of footnotes, and it appears to me that the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law. I only saw three stories that involved what sounded like a possible “true threat” … Almost all the language used is protected by the First Amendment; the main issue seems seems to be the disruption and obstruction of school board meetings, which can be reached by local trespassing laws or disturbance of the peace laws, but nothing remotely federal. So it seems we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently non-federal conduct.
As Breitbart News reported in 2022, two Republican congressmen said that a whistleblower alleged that the FBI launched dozens of investigations into parents after Garland directed the agency to do so.
Gene Hamilton, America First Legal president, said:
The Biden Administration appears to have engaged in a conspiracy that was ultimately aimed at depriving parents of two fundamental rights—the right to speak, and the right to direct the upbringing of their children. They did so with political intentions, most immediately by attempting to influence the Virginia gubernatorial election, and to more broadly chill dissent across the United States.
Some of the most publicized school board protests were in Virginia.
Fox News’s reporting on the released documents also cited Garland’s frequent response when asked by lawmakers — that his DOJ always worked independently of the White House on high-profile legal matters.
The new emails about the school board letter contradict that message, the news outlet pointed out.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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