News/Commentary

‘There’s nothing to rescind’: Garland reveals the fate of incendiary memo targeting parents

September 23, 2023 | | Print Article

Attorney General Merrick Garland was confronted by a furious Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) this week, demanding to know if the memo sent out by him targeting parents had ever been rescinded.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

The confrontation took place during a hearing concerning the Biden administration’s “domestic terrorist” parents memorandum. It ostensibly targeted parents across the nation who attended school board meetings to protest gender issues, curriculum, and books they did not consider appropriate for their children.

“Roy pressed Garland on the memo directing the FBI to use counterterrorism tools relating to parents speaking out at school board meetings against K-12 curriculum and agendas with which they disagreed, such as Critical Race Theory and gender ideology-related policies in schools. After Roy repeatedly asked Garland whether the memo was rescinded, the attorney general finally acknowledged that it wasn’t,” Fox News reported.

“There’s nothing to rescind,” Garland insisted, playing word games over the memo. “The memo was intended to have meetings within 30 days… The 30 days have finished. Nothing has happened in more than a year and a half with respect to that.”

His response did not answer the question. If the memo was not rescinded, regardless of a lapsed period of time, that indicates that it is still in force which was evidently Roy’s point.

“The memorandum was initiated after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to President Biden in September 2021 asking for parents protesting at school board meetings to be federally looked into, claiming school officials were facing threats and violence at meetings. Most significantly, the NSBA requested in its original letter that parents’ actions should be examined under the PATRIOT Act as ‘domestic terrorists.’ The PATRIOT Act was signed into law in 2001 by President George Bush after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to combat terrorism and expand the boundaries of surveillance,” Fox News recounted.

Of particular note to Roy was a news report that the NSBA’s letter cited an incident at a Virginia school board meeting where a father named Scott Smith was arrested. His daughter had been sexually assaulted by a transgender in a school bathroom. Roy had previously grilled Garland concerning the father.

Smith asserted in a statement after his pardon by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, “I am a father who deeply cares for his daughter… I am not a ‘domestic terrorist,” adding that he was “just a father who will go to the ends of the Earth to protect his daughter.”

The father also declared after the incident initially occurred, “The NSBA defamed me, impugning my reputation and that of other concerned parents who dared challenge our local school board.”

Garland issued a memo on Oct. 4, 2021, that instructed the FBI to work with state and local leaders to address “threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

The attorney general contended that the collaboration “will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

Fox News obtained emails in November 2021 that showed the NSBA was working with the DOJ and the Biden administration before the letter was sent out.

Roy also cornered Garland on whether he agreed with Youngkin pardoning Smith.

“On Oct. 21, 2021, before this committee, I asked you about Mr. Scott Smith. A father in Loudoun County, Virginia, arrested at a school board meeting, he questioned the rape of his daughter in the bathroom of a public school there. You said at the time you were unfamiliar with the case. Are you now? Yes or no?” Roy asked at the hearing.

“I don’t know the facts of the case,” Garland disingenuously claimed.

He admitted that he had read reports about the incident in the media, so it is hard to understand how he couldn’t be familiar with the facts of that particular case. His statements appeared contradictory.

Roy asked Garland if he had apologized for putting out the memo “about Scott Smith.”

“The memo said nothing about him, nothing about parents being terrorists, nothing about attending school boards — ” the attorney general responded.

“Over a week after the Biden administration was sued for non-compliance with FOIA relating to the memorandum, the Justice Department issued new FOIA guidelines that claimed it ‘favor[ed] disclosure and transparency,'” Fox News added.

“For more than fifty years, the Freedom of Information Act has been a vital tool for advancing the principles of open government and democratic accountability that are at the heart of who we are as public servants … [T]he Justice Department will work every day to uphold those principles, which are essential to the rule of law,” Garland declared.

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