The Biden administration used the FBI’s counterterrorism resources to target parents and local elected officials, according to whistleblowers cited in a congressional letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who previously said in testimony before the U.S. Congress that such a thing never happened.
The letter, sent to Garland by the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), cites evidence provided to Congress by whistleblowers showing that the FBI launched dozens of investigations into parents who criticized Covid-related school policies, such as mask mandates, at school-board meetings. The evidence was provided as part of an investigation into the application of Garland’s October memo to the FBI instructing them to treat conservative parents as “domestic terrorists.”
The letter reads,
In sworn testimony before this Committee, you denied that the Department of Justice or its components were using counterterrorism statutes and resources to target parents at school board meetings. We now have evidence that contrary to your testimony, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has labeled at least dozens of investigations into parents with a threat tag created by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division to assess and track investigations related to school boards…. These investigations into concerned parents are the direct result of, and could not have occurred but for, your directive to federal law enforcement to target these categories of people.
The letter cites the details of a couple of probes.
In one case, after receiving a complaint through the National Threat Operations Center “snitch-line,” the FBI interviewed a mother who told school-board members, “we are coming for you.” Apparently, the woman was viewed as a threat because she belonged to the “right-wing moms’ group” called Moms for Liberty and because she was a gun owner.
The mom told the FBI she was upset about the school board’s mask mandates and that her statement in question meant that she and other members of the group would try to vote out some of the officials in elections.
Another complaint, quoted by Jordan, also came through the snitch-line, and involved a father who “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns and threatens to use them.”
Finally, the letter notes a case in which the FBI opened an investigation into a local Republican official “over allegations from a state Democratic party official” that the opponents of the school district’s Covid vaccine mandates “incited violence” by expressing their criticism on the matter.
“This whistleblower information is startling. You have subjected these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them … as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children,” the letter concludes, calling on Garland to turn over information previously sought by the committee and void his Memorandum from October 4, 2021 (pdf) that instructed the DOJ and FBI to address the issue of “threats” against the school-board members.
As reported by The New American, FBI internal correspondence made public last November clearly indicated that federal law enforcement used counterterrorism tools to target parents opposing school policies related to Covid mandates and the teaching of Critical Race Theory and age-inappropriate sexual content.
According to the report, the email, signed by Counterterrorism Division Assistant Director Timothy Langan and former Criminal Division Assistant Director Calvin Shivers, read:
The Counterterrorism and Criminal divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats…. The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels.
The email, dated October 20, 2021, added that the action was taken in response to Garland’s October 4 memorandum, in which he expressed his department’s commitment “to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
On October 23, 2021, Representative Jordan asked Garland about the involvement of the National Security Division in the task force that was ordered to “to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.” Garland responded that neither the DOJ nor the FBI, its daughter agency, used counterterrorism tools to address parents’ activism.
“I want to be clear, the Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children, about the curriculum taught in their schools,” Garland stated.
The memorandum was a response to the National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter to President Joe Biden claiming that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat” posed by the “angry mobs” of parents. Notably, most of the incidents cited by NSBA did not involve threats of physical violence or instances of actual violence. Instead, the association referred to news articles about “disruptions,” “disorderly conduct,” and “contentious behavior,” all of which were handled by local law enforcement.
When it became evident that the NSBA colluded with the Biden administration to pen the letter yet failed to consult with its local divisions, the association disavowed the letter, saying that “there was no justification for some of the language included.”
Still, the memo was never withdrawn.
