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:
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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