Merrick Garland lost the trust of the American people after he directed the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to “investigate” an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”
The directive was in response to an insane letter sent to Joe Biden by the National School Board Association (NSBA), which likened concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings to domestic terrorists for daring to speak out against schools’ transgender policies, mask mandates, and critical race theory. PJM’s Megan Fox investigated examples cited by the NSBA and found there wasn’t one legitimate threat referenced by the NSBA. “What the NSBA wants to do is crack down on free speech and, stupidly, they attached to their letter every example of parents speaking freely and demanding that the FBI stop it,” she pointed out.
Conservative talk radio host and author Mark Levin accused the Biden administration of colluding with the teachers’ unions “to silence and intimidate American citizens.” Levin cited as evidence a letter from the nonprofit organization America First Legal (AFL) to the United States inspector general, which said: “It appears the Department of Justice is committing the full weight of its federal law enforcement resources to prevent parents from exercising constitutionally-protected rights and privileges, for inappropriate partisan purposes.”
According to the AFL, it’s an inside job by “key Biden Administration stakeholders, including the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and others, have combined to oppress, threaten, and intimidate parents to chill and prevent them from exercising the rights or privileges secured by the Constitution. To date these efforts, though extensive, have generally proven ineffectual.”
Emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon also revealed that the White House collaborated with the NSBA before the group sent the letter, which described concerned parents as domestic terrorists.
The NSBA has since apologized for the letter that prompted Merrick Garland to mobilize the federal government to target parents as if they were domestic terrorists. “On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter,” the NSBA wrote in a letter to its members dated October 22. “To be clear, the safety of school board members, other public school officials and educators, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue. However, there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance. We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.”
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is now calling on Garland to resign. “Merrick Garland mobilized the FBI to intimidate parents without legal basis and, we now know, premised on misinformation he didn’t bother to verify,” Hawley said in a tweet Friday. “It was a dangerous abuse of authority that has badly compromised the Justice Dept’s integrity and Garland’s. He should resign.”
Garland absolutely should resign, but this issue is bigger than Garland. The White House collaborated with the NSBA before the letter was sent. According to emails, the White House even requested that the NSBA include examples of alleged threats (the ones Megan Fox looked into and found not to be legitimate threats at all) the day before Garland issued his memorandum directing the FBI to work with other law enforcement agencies to target parents. The White House wanted justification for getting the Department of Justice involved. Merrick Garland abused his power, but so did the White House. Garland was not a lone wolf.
