This is what weaponization looks like.
The FBI investigating a mom because she is a gun owner and belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group.” Federal agents harassing a dad because he “rail[ed] against the government.”
Five years ago today, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland released his memorandum laying out what his corrupt Department of Justice could do to assist in investigating and prosecuting the parents accused of being “domestic terrorists” for speaking out against far-left initiatives and draconian Covid policies at school board meetings. The Democrat AG’s memo followed a National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter begging President Joe Biden and his politically-driven Department of Justice to recognize the “immediate threat” these parents posed to America’s public schools and their leaders. The letter urged Biden to treat the parents’ confrontational behavior like it was “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.”
We know that the NSBA, after a wave of criticism from affiliates, was forced to apologize for the letter from School Boards Association President Viola Garcia and interim CEO Chip Slaven. The association acknowledged “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter” and that the executive office had not consulted with state affiliates.
Despite the NSBA’s admission, Garland stubbornly refused to rescind his memo, and federal law enforcement officials opened 25 preliminary assessment files — Guardian assessments — into spurious “school board threats.” Six of the assessments operated out of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, 17 involved the Criminal Investigations Division, and two involved the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. It appears not a one of the targets was prosecuted.
Now, thanks to a new DOJ report, we know that the Biden White House was squarely behind Garland’s effort to find a federal “hook” to prosecute parents and school policy protesters with federal crimes. That finding contradicts a National School Boards Association independent review that found no collusion with the Biden administration.
“The Garland Memorandum was the product of pressure by senior leadership to support the NSBA and to bring federal pressure to bear on parents protesting school districts that had enacted certain policies,” asserts “The 2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools,” released by Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday morning.
And a very reluctant DOJ finally bowed to political pressure to push a plan of attack that agents described as “stupid,” “ridiculous,” and a “partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration.”
“Officials in the Department of Justice, including both career officials and Biden Administration political appointees, initially pushed back on doing so, including by questioning the constitutionality of the request,” the report states. “Notwithstanding the internal pushback, the Department moved ahead with issuing the Garland Memorandum based on pressure from Biden Administration officials in the White House and leadership at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (‘ODAG’) at the Department of Justice.”
‘A Political Offensive’
The NSBA letter to Biden, sent on Sept. 29, 2021, followed months of growing frustration from parents across the country over closed schools, mask policies, vaccine mandates, and social reengineering curricula driven by racist Critical Race Theory instruction in classrooms. Some local school board officials didn’t care for the tone or tenor of parents critical of school district policies. Sometimes the meetings grew quite heated, as well documented at the time.
But local school officials grew alarmed by the heat they were taking, alleging harassment, intimidation, even acts of domestic terrorism.
The NSBA has admitted that it had been coordinating with Biden’s Department of Education since July 2021 to provide “talking points and push back on critics regarding critical race theory (“CRT”) and transgender policies that are creating “hostile situations for school board members,” according to the report.
A 2023 Interim Staff Report of the House’s Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government found “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,” the committee report states. “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.”
‘Anti-MAGA Task Force’
According to the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, Ephraim McDowell, who was at the time Deputy Associate Counsel at the White House Counsel’s Office, forwarded a Sept. 22, 2021 email from NSBA’s Slaven to Eric Nguyen in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. Slaven had originally sent the email to Mary C. Wall, senior adviser to Biden and the White House link to the NSBA. Wall sought a sneak peek at the associations letter.
“Is there any way we can take a look at the letter in advance of release? In specific, I’m meeting with colleagues from other WH offices and DOJ tomorrow morning to see if there might be any options we can pursue here, so if you have concrete recommendations in your letter (e.g., the threat assessment you mentioned), would be good to know so I can include in discussions,” Wall requested of Slaven. Slaven claimed that Proud Boys members were “showing up at various school board meetings” and “Qanon followers [were] considering running for school board elections.”
Kevin Chambers, associate deputy attorney general, who ultimately took lead on the DOJ’s portion of the coordinated effort, was in the email chain. Chambers was among several attorney general staffers who raised concerns about the push for federal intervention and found Slaven’s claims of domestic terrorism unconvincing, to say the least. One attorney was blunt. “This is ridiculous,” the DOJ official wrote in an email dated, Sept. 24, 2021.
Source: Weaponization Working Group Report
Chambers thought the whole thing a “local issue,” according to the documents.
But Chambers was malleable on the matter. He seems to have second-guessed himself in another email, acknowledging that he “may not be thinking creatively enough.” He wondered if some of the threats “have some federal dimension.”
When the School Boards Association letter dropped, it “kicked off a flurry of activity” at DOJ, according to the report. High-ranking officials in the Biden administration “pushed to treat protests of school policies as possible violations of federal criminal law.” At the White House on Oct. 1, 2021, McDowell stressed to Chambers that other administration officials considered the issue “fairly urgent” and they wanted to “hear what DOJ is thinking about them.”
Still, FBI officials were trying to talk some sense into DOJ leadership.
“This is potentially dangerous ground, to blanket label generalized activity that constitutes DT [domestic terrorism] regardless of federal violations,” wrote the FBI’s Steven Jensen in an Oct. 1 email. He noted what would have been clear to less politically-motivated DOJ officials, that not all opponents of school board actions and legislative decisions are domestic terrorists.
The following day, Chambers sent an email to DOJ attorneys letting them know he would be circulating “a draft memo from the AG” on parental protests and “threats against election officials.” The memo would also instruct U.S. attorneys’ offices and FBI divisions “to convene . . . meetings with state and local law enforcement regarding both types of threats.”
The news wasn’t warmly received. One attorney huffed that leadership “might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.” Another responded, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” One attorney wrote that making the “DOJ/FBI…. The threats police” lacked a “limiting principle.”
Source: The Weaponization Working Group Report
‘Misinformation and Disinformation’
Chambers and crew evidently were not convinced. They went ahead with the Garland memo. And they sent the NSBA an advance copy. In an email delivered on Oct. 4, 2021, a DOJ Public Affairs official told Slaven that the matter was “a very important issue” to the department. And Slaven responded that his association was ready to assist the DOJ. Two days after the Garland memo went out, Slaven asked whether the NSBA should “be communicating with” the FBI to inform on parents “if things increase.”
The Justice Department wasn’t the only agency weaponized. Garland’s team wanted to involve the National Security Division “in matters involving parents and school boards.”
Source: The Weaponization Working Group Report
The Department of Homeland Security, according to the report, circulated a threat assessment titled, “Threats to Public Schools Likely Elevated Due to Opposition of Mask and Vaccine Mandates, Perception of Critical Race Theory.” The agency rated as “medium confidence” potential threats to school personnel caused by “misinformation and disinformation related to CRT curriculum, and upcoming school board elections and the approval of a COVID vaccine for children.”
Sound familiar? Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the same time censored conservatives, accusing them of disseminating “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.”
The DOJ continued to target citizens for their political speech long after the NSBA withdrew its letter, according to Working Group report. In a January 10, 2022 email Chambers verified that the task force the DOJ had established was “continuing to track threats and investigate parents.”
‘They Came After Me Relentlessly’
In June of this year, the DOJ held a Roundtable on Exposing Weaponization Against Parents in Schools. A parent who spoke at the event said Garland’s memo served as a “green light, a permission slip to these activists in the community that worked with the school boards, that worked with [local prosecutors] to target people, to intimidate people, to harass people.”
“According to the federal government, we’re the bad ones … They came after me relentlessly,” the parent said. “I was subject … to a year long online defamation campaign. I had hate mail sent to my home saying that I was a cancer to the community. I had a … box of coal delivered to my door which my daughters opened on Christmas Eve. I had mail sent to all of my neighbors saying that I was a racist and white supremacist and they should shun me.”
Included in NSBA’s list of potential domestic terrorists was Scott Smith, whose disabled daughter was “attacked, anally raped, and orally sodomized, in a girls’ restroom stall at Stone Bridge [High School], by a male student dressed in female attire.” Smith spoke up at a school board meeting after the Loudoun County (Va). School Superintendent falsely stated, “We don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” The attacker was later convicted on sexual assault charges. Smith was arrested on disorderly conduct charges after a confrontation with someone who “threatened to spread false and malicious information” about Smith. He was later pardoned by then-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
‘Without Fear or Favor’
The Weaponization Working Group makes several recommendations to right the Garland DOJ’s many wrongs. First, it will allow parents targeted in the witch hunt to review the DOJ reports on them. A disclaimer will be added to the assessments noting that the Garland memo “raised serious constitutional concerns …” If the DOJ finds parents’ constitutional rights were violated the department will issue a formal apology and “institute internal controls as necessary to prevent repeating the violation.”
DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services is partnering with the National Association of School Resource Officers, awarding the organization $1.5 million “to develop and deliver a series of training and technical assistance … to increase the organization’s capacity to inform school employees regarding the rights of parents in our primary and secondary educational system.”And additional funding will go to train teachers and staff about First Amendment rights of parents “to direct and guide the upbringing and education of their children”
DOJ and the Department of Education leadership on Monday sent letters to all 50 state attorneys general regarding parental rights.
“The Justice Department remains committed to defending Constitutionally protected civil liberties, especially the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” the DOJ said in a statement. “Individuals with concerns about unconstitutional conduct are encouraged to come forward; the Department will evaluate such matters without fear or favor.”
