DOJ Attack On Parent Protest Movement Was Pre-Arranged Ambush, Says Letter Seeking Inspector General Investigation
“Biden Administration officials developed a plan to use a letter from an outside group (“not the usual suspects”) as pretext for federal action to chill, deter, and discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights and privileges.”
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Department of Justice at the highest level up to and including Attorney General Merrick Garland, is using its enormous police power to intimidate opponents of the Biden administration by branding such opponents as domestic terrorists.
We covered Garland’s intimidation tactics on July 16, 2021, and again on October 5, 2021. That latter post concerned Garland’s October 4 memo targeting parents protesting at school board meetings. As we covered on October 6, 2021, the Rhode Island Association of School Committees promptly acted on Garland’s memo:
Now Garland has proven again his unfitness not only to be Attorney General, but for the role he aspired to on the Supreme Court.
Garland issued a memo bringing together a law enforcement coalition to go after supposed threats to school boards from parents protesting Critical Race Theory teaching and Covid mask and vaccine mandates. Where is the evidence of widespread or coordinated violence such that a federal and state joint national effort is needed?
In fact, where is the evidence of violence at all? If there are isolated instances, local law enforcement is equipped and appropriate to deal with it.
What there is are angry parents voicing their opinions loudly, sometimes in the face of bullying from union-aligned school boards and administrators. That is constitutionally protected speech. But Garland knew that by bringing together a national coalition of law enforcement he was portraying protesters as the equivalent of terror suspects. This was an act of political intimidation, as Senator Josh Hawley correctly pointed out today while questioning the Deputy Attorney General:
.@HawleyMO: If this [Garland memo] isn't a deliberate attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings… I don't know what is.
…You're using the FBI to intervene in school board meetings. pic.twitter.com/RT1f1mrwBL
— Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) October 5, 2021
Garland memo already is having an impact, Garland Memo Fallout: RI Assoc. of School Committees To “Coordinate” With FBI And Gather Information On Public Meeting “Issues”.
Something about this all seemed like a set up. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter on September 29, 2021, seeking federal intervention and law enforcement action, asserting that protests had risen to the level of threats that needed to be treated as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
And just a few days later the Attorney General of the United States issued a memo acting on that request? Really? Just like that over a weekend?
Multiple Legal Insurrection readers sent me a link to a letter that details a series of meetings and contacts showing the NSBA letter to DOJ was a set-up, a pre-arranged pretext to carry out an agenda to silence the growing parent protest movement.
The Letter (pdf.) was sent by America First Legal, headed by former Trump advisor Steven Miller. It explains on its website:
Today, America First Legal requested that the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigate the circumstances surrounding Attorney General Garland’s October 4th memorandum regarding the use of federal law enforcement against parents opposed to critical race theory, gender ideology, and irrational mask mandates in public schools. Among other things, AFL asked OIG to investigate whether the Attorney General’s Memorandum was issued on Biden White House instructions contrary to the department’s standard procedures, and to determine if it was issued for the improper partisan purpose of chilling and deterring parents from exercising their constitutional right to control and direct the education of their children.
The Letter appears to first have received national attention when mentioned by Mark Levin:
“The federal government is using its power to silence and intimidate American citizens,” said conservative talk radio host and author Mark Levin, who released a bombshell letter on his program Thursday. “They’re trying to chill free speech.”
The Letter has tons of details. The persons involved are named as “John Doe” — but the details are so specific that AFL apparently has inside information (emphasis added):
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.
Our understanding of the facts is as follows:
• Parents nationwide have protested public school policies and practices associated with, inter alia, the teaching or indoctrination of K-12 students in certain principles of Critical Race Theory and gender-related ideology.4
• 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.5 To date these efforts, though extensive, have generally proven ineffectual.
• In early September, Biden Administration stakeholders held discussionsregarding avenues for potential federal action against parents with a key Biden Domestic Policy Council official (Jane Doe #1) and White House staff (John Doe #1). Stakeholders also held discussions with senior department officials, including at least one political appointee in the department’s Civil Rights Division (Jane Doe #2). Jane Doe #1, John Doe #1, and others in the White House separately expressed concern regarding the potential partisan political impact of parent mobilization and organization around school issuesin the upcoming midterm elections.
• Upon information and belief, at the express direction of or with the express consent of Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2 and other Biden Administration officials developed a plan to use a letter from an outside group (“not the usual suspects”) as pretext for federal action to chill, deter, and discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights and privileges.
• Upon information and belief, in or about mid-September work began on development of what became the Attorney General’s Memorandum. Concerns expressed by department staff included (1) the absence of federal law enforcement nexus and authority, and (2) the constitutionally protected natureof parent protests. However, Jane Doe #2 made it clear this was a White House priority and a deliverable would be created.
• On or about September 29, citing legal authorities including the Patriot Act, the “National School Boards Association” made public a letter demanding federal action against parents citing authorities including the Patriot Act. The justification for federal action included, inter alia, parents were “posting watchlists against school boards and spreading misinformation (sic) that boards are adopting critical race theory curriculum and working to maintain online learning by haphazardly attributing it to COVID-19.”6 It is not yet clear whether and to what extent drafts of this letter were shared with Biden Administration officials, including Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, and whether changes were suggested or made by them, prior to the ostensible public release date.
• On October 4, the Attorney General’s Memorandum was made public. The short time frame between the September 29 letter and the Attorney General’s Memorandum suggests that either the entire matter was precoordinated and the September 29 but pretext, or that the normal clearance process and standard order both within the department (including legal sufficiency review by the Office of Legal Counsel, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Office of Legal Policy, and other components), and between the department and the White House Counsel’s Office and the Office of Management and Budget, were bypassed or corrupted.
• On October 5, there was a follow up call involving, inter alia, the White House Counsel’s Office, Jane Doe # 2, and many other Biden Administration political and career officials. The briefing included how to talk about “equity” initiatives, avoid liability for violating discrimination laws, and hide “equity” measures, initiatives, and action from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.
Legal Insurrection readers should take note of the footnotes, where Legal Insurrection is cited twice (emphasis added):
5 See Samuel Chamberlin, Teachers’ union sues Rhode Island mom over requests for CRT curriculum info, NEW YORK POST (Aug. 5, 2021) https://nypost.com/2021/08/05/teachers-union-sues-mom-overrequests-for-crt-curriculum-info/; William A. Jacobson, Union-Linked Coalition Scripts ‘Messaging’ To Counter Parental Pushback Against Critical Race Theory, LEGAL INSURRECTION (July 5, 2021) https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/union-linked-coalition-scripts-messaging-to-counter-parentalpushback-against-critical-race-theory/; Harold Hutchinson, ‘Expose These People Publicly’: Parents Against Critical Race Curriculum Listed By Teachers Attempting To ‘Infiltrate’ Them, Daily Caller (March 17, 2021) https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/17/virginia-parents-targeted-for-opposing-criticalrace-theory/. The described conduct, if it occurs, implicates significant 18 U.S.C. § 241 concerns.
6 Nat’l School Board Ass’n, Letter to Joseph R. Biden Re: Federal Assistance to Stop Threats and Acts of Violence Against Public Schoolchildren, Public School Board Members, and Other Public SchoolDistrict Officials and Educators (sic) at 5 (Sept. 29, 2021) https://nsba.org/-/media/NSBA/File/nsbaletter-to-president-biden-concerning-threats-to-public-schools-and-school-board-members-92921.pd. This letter repeated teacher union-approved talking points, including the claim “critical race theory is not taught in public schools…” Id. at 1; but see William A. Jacobson, supra note 5; Jessica Anderson,Reading, Writing, and Racism: the NEA’s Campaign to Gaslight Parents, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE (July 10, 2021) https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/reading-writing-and-racism-the-neascampaign-to-gaslight-parents/.
This was a set up, an ambush on the parent protest movement, with NSBA the false flag pushing teachers union talking points. It’s the similar to the tactics used on the Tea Party movement, Democrats/Media Deploy Same “Eliminationist Narrative” Against School Parents As They Did Against Tea Party:
We have seen this movie before. It’s the “eliminationist narrative” used against the Tea Party and Trump supporters. We covered the Tea Party false accusations at the time, where the media blamed every act of violence on Tea Party supporters even though such claims never had evidence and turned out to be false.
Gwendolyn Sims at PJ Media makes the point that the whole thing smelled fishy from the start:
In other words, AFL says the Biden administration was in on the unconstitutional effort to mitigate the “political impact of parent mobilization [at school board meetings] and organization around school issues [like CRT and mask mandates] in the upcoming midterm elections” all along. And who was that “outside group”? The good old National School Board Association (NSBA). Remember them and their September 29 letter calling America’s concerned parents “domestic terrorists”? I wrote about them here.
So now we know why we had never heard of the NSBA before because during the White House and the DOJ meetings they planned to send the letter not from “the usual suspects,” meaning the leftist teachers’ unions, but from the NSBA, which is supposed to represent America’s parents. And now the AFL suggests that the short time for the AG’s memorandum to be written and made public after the NSBA’s letter was sent to Biden is suspect as well….
DOJ cannot be trusted to be politically neutral. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you haven’t been paying attention.
DOJ will not, of course, be held accountable. Some several months or years from now, there may be an Inspector General Report. But by then, the damage will be done.
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Comments
Yeah! That’ll teach them! Now the OIG will spend at least 2 years investigating these suspicious circumstances until, in the end, a heavily redacted report will be released to the public. The NYT and fellow travelers will ignore it. The midterms will be over. And everything will go on as usual.
Talk about fighting back!
I’d love to see some.
McConnell and GOP in the Senate are too busy making deals with Schumer to do their job of oversight. Not that they, with a couple/few exceptions, want to have anything to do with this.
There are even so-called self described ‘conservative’ blogs that have not posted a word about this.
Shutup, you whiner. Stop trying to depress everyone and go do some work rather than bitching and moaning like a little girl.
It’s utterly despicable and entirely predictable that the vile, totalitarian, lawless and obnoxious Dhimmi-crats would resort to underhanded tactics to advance their agenda and to cow and vilify the opposition. Vile AG Garland dutifully followed the Soviet/Maoist playbook, declaring that parents protesting “Critical Race Theory” garbage ideology are “Enemies of the State,” or, “domestic terrorists,” in the common parlance of Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks.
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” Ascribed to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whether he in fact said it, the sentiment conveyed, that there is an overall plan, is valid. Isn’t that right, CFR?
Holds true >99% of the time. In my lifetime Trump was the 1%
NAT’L SCHOOL BOARD ASSN. IS A WOKE PROGRESSIVE ORGANIZATION
NSBA has a political affiliation with Woke Progressives. How can ANY school board be a member or get materials from such a clearly biased organization. IN FACT, this organization is disseminating CRT materials and has a Racial Equity initiative called “DIRE:. It makes RACE central to every decision in education. https://www.nsba.org/Advocacy/Equity
NO WONDER most school boards in America are all F*CKED UP. The leading non-profit that advises school boards has a woke Political Agenda.
Go to the website. Checkout this Bull Shit. https://www.nsba.org/
LET’S SET UP / SUPPORT AN ALTERNATIVE TO THIS BIASED ORGANIZATION. A NEW ORGANIZATION THAT IS FOCUSED ON KIDS EDUCATION – NOT POLITICAL AGENDAS AND INDOCTRINATION.
People often say “what can I do about it” – This is what can be done. Set up a new Association for School Boards that is not biased or supporting of CRT / indoctrination. Then donate to the new Association – volunteer for it. I would be happy to work with anyone who is doing this or wants to do it.
Why aren’t there 1,000 Likes ?
Insults and shouting are domesticated violence. That’s what peace looks like. Domestication is what produces it.
I got the feathers; who’s got the tar?
That suggestion got me a time out on a birdlike social media platform.
A response similar to yours got me kicked off FB.
“Traitors must hang”
Yet Kathy Griffin gets to hold up Trump’s decapitated head.
Torches and Pitchforks
I have it somewhere at hand. There it is. Right next to my rope and lamp post.
“Biden Administration officials developed a plan to use a letter from an outside group (“not the usual suspects”) as pretext for federal action to chill, deter, and discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights and privileges.”
Why are we even listening to anything this corrupt junta has to say? They allow 500000 illegal aliens into our lands every month, without covid testing or shots, most having the coof-19, but fire us from our jobs if we don’t take their Bill Gates shots.
What part of this are you missing people?
There is nothing these Marxist bastards won’t do. Listen to nothing they have to say. They simply must be eradicated from the public discourse, and then they must be eradicated from the public writ large. Like into a peat bog.
These are lunatics, and they simply must go.
Stop trying to discuss with them.
The Regime is evil.
Repeal the Patriot Act. Politicians and government bureaucrats cannot be trusted with that power. The courts are inadequate to deal with the abuse of power in a timely manner, if at all.
Defund the FBI.
FJB
Merrick Garland…making corruption great again
And Making Marxism Great Again.
For this, Merrick Garland needs to be impeached, removed, and disbarred for life. As Attorney General, he doubtlessly swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which includes the First Amendment. A hearty thanks to every GOP Senator who worked to block Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Here, parents exercising rights in contexts in which the Founders would surely approve, are called “domestic terrorists” for their objections to a dubious social theory. This is will go down as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American governance and, as a teacher I regret to say this, education. The NSBA has shown itself a group that has ceased to be an instrument for the better functioning of local boards and has become a mere institution grown arrogant, smug, and jealous of its own position and oblivious to the interests of the society it is supposed to serve.
“Mark Levin, who released a bombshell letter on his program Thursday. “They’re trying to chill free speech.”
Five years ago, this might have been a bombshell, Now it’s in the same category as the arrival of the monthly electric bill — annoying, but inexorable.
I forget where I read the quote and I don’t have it on hand, but it ran something like this: “When they shriek and scream that you are cutting them to the bone, you aren’t anywhere near the bone. When they look up at you with dull, hopeless eyes and barely react to the pain anymore, you know that the bone is finally yours.”
America is fast approaching the dull-eye stage.
We have forgotten who we are as a country. America’s greatness wasn’t achieved by tyrants ruling over meek citizens. Our freedom was created by a moral people who were so willing to fight and die for their beliefs that they flipped the very meaning of power from being the divine right of kings to to grant freedom to our divine right as human beings to be free and decide ourselves who is fit to govern.
And they died to the tune of what would be 2-3 million compared percentage-wise to our current population. We used to be taught that in public schools. Now they are teaching that America was founded in 1619 by white people for the very purpose of creating a slave state. Someone just slipped that in and no one had a problem with that and so here we are.
We really need to look into the mirror at ourselves and ask why we are putting up with this and what we are willing to do about it. We are facing a catastrophe that could kill most people on the planet. As appalled as we may be at the millions of people who died violently in the 20th century, most of them at the hands of their own low-tech governments, not enemies, how many can we expect to be murdered in the 21st century with a planet of Godless sheep being corralled with high-tech?
Now that we dumbed-down, God-less people are spending trillions of dollars like we used to spend millions, is it so farfetched to fear that we may be living in a century where billions of us will die similarly? We are just living statistics inconveniencing our Masters of the Universe who have rendered our economic management to be a hopeless pile of debt and chaos… for us. But apparently that is the path they have laid out for us.
I put up with it because lone wolf style resistance won’t work. Peasant rebellions don’t work.
I oppose this at the local level by trying to convince teachers, parents, and boards of how catastrophically bad CRT is. What can I do about the DoJ? Almost everyone I know seems to agree with me.
Hell, the FBI could arrest me, call me a terrorist, lie about their evidence, and more thanhalf of the authors on this site would cheer them on. What can any of us do at the national level without a national leader?
Mark Levin says a lot of things. Here, the organization that wrote the letter is run by a Trump aide. He might have inside information, he might not. He might have made it all up as a political operative. We need to find out whether this is true.
This type of thing happens all the time. Usually in the form of collusive lawsuits. Leftist groups will get together with government agencies such as the EPA, also stocked with leftists who, in Democrat administrations, are usually recruited from those same leftist groups and then go back to work for those same leftist groups when they leave government, and work out the kind of arrangement they both want. Environmental “justice” groups want the EPA to regulate the vital plant food CO2 as a pollutant in order to force people to give up their cars (and they won’t be replaced by electric or any other vaporware). The EPA also wants to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. So the government apparats agree to be sued, and the lawsuit will demand that they and the leftist pressure group both get everything they want. So the leftist group sues, the agency settles, and a complicit/idiot judge rubberstamps the settlement agreement.
Then the EPA (or whatever) pretends its hands are tied because they’ve been ORDERED by a court to comply.
In 2011 a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood front groups (who are dedicated to the destruction of the west) sent a letter to the Obama administration demanding that all current anti-terrorism/counter-terrorism training and intelligence materials be scrubbed of any reference to Islam or Muslims. Also they demanded that all current trainers, government as well as civilian contractors, be fired and be replaced with trainers approved by the Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
This would be like making a deal with the Soviets back during the cold war to hire Vladimir Putin as CIA director back during the cold war. But, hell, the Biden admin nominated (and she was confirmed!!) an eco-terrorist to head the Bureau of Land Management.
John Brennan was then Obama’s National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. He responded to that letter agreeing to every one of their demands. And he responded on White House letterhead stationery. He had his own letterhead stationery but undermining national security was so important to that administrations he responded on Obama’s.
Don’t think for a minute that wasn’t coordinated ahead of time, just like this charade between the NSBA-DoJ was. In fact, in both cases I wouldn’t doubt that both Brennan and Garland had already written and signed their memos and had them ready to go as soon as they received the “not the usual suspects” letters.
It might have caused some embarrassment if the Obama WH/Biden DoJ had issued their letters before they got the demand letters.
We’ve seen this MO before. They used it on Trump.
Why is it that not a single school committee has been reported to have stood up to support parents? These people took oaths swearing to God and no one else to represent parents and voters. This might seem obviously trivial but I think it speaks volumes to how we have all gotten used to taking oaths as if it is just some whimsical set of words uttered in an empty formality to get the job.
If God has truly been evicted from our society, we should halt the practice of taking oaths. What is the legal basis of enforcing oaths? It’s okay to lie so long as you are not under oath?
We have become so hollow and superficial as a society that the most important underpinnings our society’s foundation have lost all meaning. Taking oaths has been reduced to a forced, meaningless lie on the way to assuming a position.
Everyone taking an oath should be forced to demonstrate that they fully understand the importance of that oath and that they understand the consequences of their failing to honor it means immediate dismissal. Would any of our school committees survive? Even one?
It’s a fundamental problem throughout our society. It is why all important undertakings begin by invoking the blessing of God with a prayer. It is why we say the Pledge of Allegiance and play the national anthem. It is why, from the ancient times of Western civilization to only recent times, we would erect beautiful ornate buildings and dedicate them to the glory of God.
What exactly are we fighting for these days? We are close to having surrendered God, family, community and country to a promise of global government where we “will own nothing but be happy.” Is there nothing in between where we were to that cold, empty end that we are willing to risk everything for? How lost are we?
.
Because school boards comprise the sort of people who took their duties as hall monitors very seriously.
Those same people are probably the advocates of very strict enforcement of CC&Rs. Trash can taken in 16 minutes after the truck leaves, and the rules say 15: assess a fine!
Don’t give them credit for being honest, but pedantic. They know the evil they are doing. That is the side they have chosen.
“Why is it that not a single school committee has been reported to have stood up to support parents?”
Simply put? Because CRT doesn’t get taught by accident. It doesn’t appear from the bottom up.
Out where I live, the schools don’t teach this crap. Because of this, there are no parents to stand up to. There is no pushback, because there is nothing we need push back against.
The frying pan in which the frog has been sitting for 50 to 100 years is the un-American idea that our children should be educated by a government monopoly bureaucracy. The frog is now complaining about the frying pan instead of jumping out.
Exactly. Some areas have precisely the opposite ideological make up as the areas being shown. Not r exactly but pro liberty/expression and very much anti authoritarian.
It’s easy sometimes to forget or overlook the fact that these areas exist when viewing the CRT/Equity controversy. Especially if one chooses to remain in an area where political power is wholly concentrated in the hands of leftist authoritarian ideologues.
Oops. My frog comment was supposed to be a top level comment instead of a “reply” to Henry.
I agree with Henry’s comment, with the provision that his situation is unusual and will require eternal vigilance to maintain.
Sounds to me like we need to get rid of school boards since we obviously don’t expect them to represent the interests of those who elected them: us. Why isn’t that a key issue here? These people aren’t “stuck” in the middle. The entire lot of them nationwide don’t understand what their jobs are for.
Phil is right. 100%.
Phil: This is sad but true. But I’m not so sure it was ever any different. Corrupt politicians have been a scourge ever the first of them cam on the scene in ancient societies. Maybe I’m just jaded at this point. I feel more sad and disappointed in humanity than angry.
Your remarks about the pointlessness of oaths in a society dominated by liars makes me think of my experiences taking a state ethics exam every few years as a license professional. I go through the motions, and I think, well, if you are ethical, you pass the exam, and if you are unethical, you cheat, and pass the exam. The only people who fail the exam are people who are stupid. But it has nothing to do with ethics.
The pattern is firming up. This looks like a slow-rolling Jan6-style Big Govt sting operation.
I hope some conservative lawyers will offer some advice to “mama bears” on how to respond if approached by a federal agent. I suspect it will be (1) say nothing without an attorney present, (2) unless you are being detained (always ask), just walk away, (3) get names, badge numbers, photos of fed id badges presented, etc., (4) with your phone, record all interactions that you can (5) contact local CSPOA law enforcement, and (6) do NOT respond to anyone trying to provoke you to do anything violent — get their photos, recordings, etc. because they are quite possibly “narcs” — FBI agents or ‘informants’ trying another Jan 6 sting operation to get you in jail and intimidate concerned parents into remaining silent and compliant.
EXCELLENT! Your advice is right on point. If you want to protest effectively, in this day and age, you have to take account of the entire picture. Just showing up and making a stink isn’t enough. You have to protect yourself from the inevitable politically motivated counter-attacks from hostile left-wing politicians, corrupt law enforcement, and aggressive agitators. You can bet that the BLM and Antifa protestors conduct workshops with their members to discuss what to do and what not to do in various scenarios.
Jack booted thugs. Get your kids out of government indoctrination centers. So glad I put my four in private Christian schools. They all think for themselves.
hard to think of a more blatant, in-your-face “screw you!” to CA parents than what newsom is doing
lord–hope our countrymen there have the strength and courage to resist and defy this nonsense–this is galactically beyone mere government “overreach”
Notice how eager the left is to protect woman from being intimidated from getting an abortion that they tried to take the matter straight to federal court, whereas suppressing the rights of their political enemies, let alone protecting them, is just A-OK. I wonder if there are any strategies being pursued to go after federal law enforcement in federal court to fight back against this intimidation campaign under some sort of 1st or 14th amendment legal theory.