The Justice Department released a critical report from the Weaponization Working Group on Monday, outlining how parts of the Biden administration allegedly coordinated during the pandemic to portray concerned parents as domestic terrorists.
How it started
Across the nation, parents voiced their concerns during the pandemic regarding various issues affecting their children. These included COVID-19 rules, mask mandates, what they viewed as anti-white bias in schools, and the challenges resulting from school policies based on gender ideology.
This proactive stance by parents seemed to upset some authorities.
On September 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to then-President Joe Biden, stating, “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat.” They requested federal assistance to address a surge in threats and intimidation directed at school officials nationwide.
Along with complaints about “misinformation,” the NSBA suggested that school officials were “vulnerable to acts of violence” due to their support for COVID-19 measures and other progressive policies.
The NSBA letter called upon the Biden administration to:
- “investigate, intercept, and prevent current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials”;
- consider classifying alleged “acts of malice, violence, and threats” against public school officials as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes”; and
- “examine appropriate enforceable actions” under the PATRIOT Act and other laws.
The NSBA also implied that some individuals attending school board meetings could be potential terrorists, as noted in the DOJ’s report. One such individual, Scott Smith from Virginia, spoke out after his disabled daughter was assaulted in a school restroom.
The DOJ’s new report critiques the NSBA’s letter, which was previously characterized by Republican state attorneys general as a “massive fraud” designed to intimidate parents into surrendering their rights to oversee their children’s education.
The report states that the NSBA labeled “numerous instances of constitutionally protected speech and protest as ‘threats'”, called for the Biden administration to criminalize such speech, and misleadingly suggested that school boards were facing “angry mobs” and disruptions.
On October 22, 2021, the NSBA’s board of directors reconsidered some claims from their letter, acknowledging that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.” However, the damage was already done.
The NSBA did not respond to inquiries for comments.
Despite its politically charged inaccuracies, the September 29, 2021, letter set a precedent for an October 4, 2021, memo issued by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, which took the NSBA’s claims as truth and treated their concerns as valid.
According to the documents reviewed by the Weaponization Working Group, Garland’s memo “and its suggestion that such protests could constitute federal criminal activity, including domestic terrorism, stemmed from pressures from the White House and senior DOJ officials” to portray these protests as federal offenses, regardless of their initial doubts about them.
People within the Justice Department and the FBI expressed skepticism about whether parental protests qualified as criminal behavior. An attorney from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division remarked in an email that, after reviewing the NSBA’s letter and associated links, it was clear that most cited behaviors were not subject to federal law.
Moreover, another attorney from the DOJ’s Criminal Division pointed out that an initial draft of the Garland memo connected alleged threats against school boards to election threats, which could be seen as partisan targeting of those who opposed the administration.
In spite of internal objections, Garland hurriedly issued his memo, and the administration took measures to investigate several parents.
The FBI previously confirmed to Congress that at least 25 “Guardian assessments” related to alleged threats against school boards had been launched, with six of these probes conducted by the Counterterrorism Division.
How it’s going
The Weaponization Working Group concluded that Garland’s memo was primarily driven by pressure from senior leadership to support the NSBA and impose federal scrutiny on parents protesting school district policies.
They underscored that the implication that concerned parents were infringing federal laws had a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.
While the Trump DOJ cannot undo the ramifications of the prior administration, it is proposing several corrective actions.
For starters, it will provide parents targeted by the Biden administration for their involvement in school board meetings the opportunity to see the FBI’s Guardian assessments made against them.
Additionally, the DOJ will include a disclaimer on every Guardian assessment related to Garland’s memo, indicating that “the Garland Memorandum raised serious constitutional concerns, and any Guardian assessment resulting from it should be approached cautiously.”
The department will also review the cases of all individuals investigated under the Garland memo to see if their constitutional rights were compromised.
“Parents are the natural guardians of their children,” noted Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, adding that “the Biden-Harris DOJ labeled concerned parents as threats simply for wanting to know what was happening in their children’s schools.” She emphasized the Civil Rights Division’s commitment to stand with parents and collaborate with the Department of Education to reinforce parental rights under federal law.
