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Jim Jordan sounds off on DOJ allegedly targeting parents despite Garland’s denial, says part of a bigger plan

May 12, 2022 | | Print Article

(Video: Fox News)

Multiple whistleblowers have reportedly come forward with evidence showing that the Department of Justice has been targeting dissenting parents and officials, despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s vow last year that dissenters would be left alone.

In one instance, FBI agents “interviewed a mom for allegedly telling a local school board ‘we are coming for you,'” according to a letter submitted this week to Garland by House Judiciary Committee members Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson.

“The complaint, which came into the FBI through the National Threat Operations Center snitch-line, alleged that the mom was a threat because she belonged to a ‘right wing mom’s group’ known as ‘Moms for Liberty’ and because she ‘is a gun owner,'” the letter continues.

“When an FBI agent interviewed the mom, she told the agent that she was upset about the school board’s mask mandates and that her statement was a warning that her organization would seek to replace the school board with new members through the electoral process.”

In another instance, FBI agents “opened an investigation into Republican state elected officials over allegations from a state Democratic party official that the Republicans ‘incited violence’ by expressing public displeasure with school districts’ vaccine mandates.”

Speaking on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” Thursday morning, Jordan said he and Johnson have “over two dozen” additional examples where dissenters, particularly parents, were tagged as a threat and subsequently investigated.

These findings call into question the sincerity of Garland, who, after an outcry last year over reports that the FBI was targeting dissenting parents, promised that investigations would only be launched in response to genuine threats, not just dissenting words.

“So it sure looks like the statement the attorney general made last October was not accurate, based on what multiple whistleblowers have now come forward and told us about what is going on out there,” Jordan noted.

He also highlighted another example in which FBI agents interviewed the individual who’d filed a complaint, only to discover that the individual had no evidence to substantiate their claim.

“We do know [that] in one of those situations, when they actually interviewed the person who put the complaint in, who went to the snitch line that was established, they said, ‘Well, we didn’t actually know of any threats or any real crime; we just knew we didn’t like what these people, they were, you know, bad people; they were conservative,'” he explained.

“So there was no evidence, and yet that person [who was targeted with a complaint], the threat tag was associated with their name, and they were investigated by the FBI, which is exactly what we said was going to happen,” he added.

The more “chilling impact,” he continued, is how these findings fit in with a broader pattern of behavior by the Biden administration.

“Two weeks ago we learned about the Disinformation Governance Board. … It’s all designed to chill First Amendment activity, to chill free speech, and that is the thing that concerns me more than anything else, because it played out just like we thought it would,” he said.

As previously reported, amid a spate of heated school board hearings last year, the National School Boards Association, which represents 90,000 school officials, including ones who’d been caught blacklisting and doxing parents, submitted a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to label problematic parents “domestic terrorists.”

Within days of the letter being submitted, the Justice Department’s Garland announced that the FBI would begin investigating “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” Garland wrote in a memo at the time.

“Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

The memo provoked an immediate outcry from parents concerned that the Justice Department intended to target parents for simply speaking out in dissent.

The concerns were based both on this administration’s history of trying to stifle dissent, in addition to the timing — the memo was released within a few days of the National School Boards Association’s letter.

Testifying before Congress in late October, Garland stressed that the FBI’s investigatory power would only be applied against valid threats.

This prompted pushback from Rep. Dan Bishop, who said, “You didn’t cite examples to distinguish legitimate First Amendment activity from criminal activity.”

Months later, the reason why no examples were cited seems clear …

Vivek Saxena
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