With the nation’s focus directed toward the saga of The Democrat Party v. Donald Trump, a report was released this week by the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the House Judiciary Committee. The report, with the rather verbose title “A ‘Manufactured’ Issue And ‘Misapplied’ Priorities: Subpoenaed Documents Show No Legitimate Basis for the Attorney General’s Anti-Parent Memo” offers a look at how the Department of Justice targeted parents who had the temerity to disagree with school curricula policies and, moreover, school boards.
A press release from the committee said that the report illustrates how:
- Internal communications show that the Biden Administration and National School Boards Association extensively colluded prior to the Attorney General’s memorandum on October 4, 2021;
- If the DOJ performed due diligence before promulgating the Attorney General’s memorandum, the Department would have learned it lacked a legitimate predicate;
- Local law enforcement around the country described the problem as “manufactured” and warned of “misapplied” federal law-enforcement priorities; and
- Local officials generally opposed federal intervention at local school board meetings.
In the executive summary, the report mentions how the oversight on the issue began in October 2021 “following the issuance of a memorandum from Attorney General Merrick Garland directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation and all U.S. Attorney’s Offices—among other Department components—to examine and address threats posed by parents at school board meetings.”
Related: The Loudoun County Father Arrested at a School Board Meeting Is Cleared of Charges
The report notes that whistleblowers provided pertinent information while the Biden administration declined to cooperate with the 117th Congress. A report that was commissioned by the National School Boards Association showed how that association colluded with the Biden administration to leverage the power of federal law enforcement, and even counter-terrorism measures against dissenting parents. It ultimately took a subpoena from Chairman Jim Jordan to start the flow of the requested information.
The committee determined that the Biden administration “misused federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources for political purposes.” Documents from the DOJ showed that there was no reason for Garland’s directive or the actions of the DOJ to investigate threats against school boards. According to the report, one U.S. Attorney said that the matter was not well-received by law enforcement in his area. He was quoted as saying, “No one I spoke with in law enforcement seemed to think that there is a serious national threat directed at school boards, which gave the impression that our priorities are misapplied.”
Yet another U.S. Attorney’s office noted that even the local field office of the FBI did not see any imminent threats to school boards or even any “worrisome trends.” Local law enforcement officials believed that they, not the federal government, should conduct any investigations. Furthermore, the report also states that many of the threats forwarded to Main Justice had little connection to school board issues.
Including the Executive Summary, the full report runs 21 pages. But one paragraph sums the issue up concisely:
The documents received pursuant to the Committee’s subpoena show the absence of a legitimate nationwide basis for the Attorney General’s directive to insert federal law enforcement into local school board matters. The documents also shed light onto how the Administration worked with education special interests to generate the predicate for the Attorney General’s directive. It appears, from these documents and the information received previously, that the Administration’s actions were a political offensive meant to quell swelling discord over controversial education curricula and unpopular school board decisions. The Attorney General’s directive came just weeks before a pivotal gubernatorial election in Virginia, in which education policies were hotly debated and a local school board’s actions were under intense scrutiny. The inference from the initial tranche of subpoenaed documents is that the Justice Department’s actions were a reaction to these political circumstances rather than a legitimate law-enforcement response to any serious, nationwide threat.
The investigation into the DOJ’s actions and Garland’s memo, which he has yet to rescind despite repeated requests from Republicans on the committee, continues. The DOJ and the Department of Education have produced documents requested by the committee. On the other hand, the FBI, according to the press release, “has produced only 14 pages of documents and permitted an in camera review of 346 pages to date in response to the Committee’s subpoena—a flagrant disregard of the serious concerns about the Bureau’s misuse of its authorities against parents.”
This is not a cautionary tale for conservatives. Conservatives already understand the danger, and much of the news above is not new to them. The warning is for progressives. For the left-leaning person reading this, you should keep something in mind. Biden and Garland did not invent this strategy. And this strategy always creates the same results. Something to think about, progressives: if this trend in the government is not stopped, you had better learn to toe every line and regurgitate every piece of propaganda. And you had better learn to guard every word and every thought. Because when they are done with conservatives, they will be watching you.
The full report can be viewed here.
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