On the Frontlines Fighting the “Weaponization” of the Federal Government

(Washington, D.C. – Jan. 12, 2023) Today, the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The lawsuit challenges the Attorney General’s political attack against parents who speak out at school board meetings against the indoctrination of their children by “woke” school boards.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of parents from Loudoun County, Virginia and Saline, Michigan.

As stated in AFLC’s opening brief:

“The Attorney General of the United States (‘AG’) has weaponized the vast law enforcement resources of the federal government to target parents, including Plaintiffs-Appellants (“Plaintiffs”), and other private citizens who publicly oppose the progressive and immoral agenda being forced upon their children in various school districts across the country, specifically including the school districts in Loudoun County, Virginia, and Saline, Michigan.  The AG has pejoratively designated these parents and private citizens as ‘threats’ and ‘domestic terrorists,’ deeming them worthy of investigation and surveillance by the federal government.  This Orwellian policy violates Plaintiffs’ fundamental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution and federal statutory law.”

The timing of this filing couldn’t be better as Congress (House of Representatives) just created a panel on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” to investigate such tyrannical governmental action.

On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Garland announced with public fanfare that he was calling upon the FBI and federal prosecutors to use the overwhelming power of the federal government’s criminal justice system to target those parents who dare to publicly criticize the local school boards that are indoctrinating their children with a harmful and radical left-wing agenda disguised as school curricula.

As the basis for creating this new policy, the Attorney General relied exclusively on the propaganda letter drafted by “progressive” members of the National School Boards Association (“NSBA”), which labeled the parents as “domestic terrorists.”

However, it turns out that the NSBA letter was orchestrated by the Biden Administration in order to create the pretext for the policy.  Bear in mind, the federal government (DOJ and FBI) has no jurisdiction over local criminal matters.  Consequently, it was important to characterize the parents as “domestic terrorists” in order to get the jurisdictional hook.

Pursuant to the challenged policy, the FBI created a “threat tag” to aid in tracking and investigating parents who the Attorney General and his “progressive” allies consider a threat to school board officials.

An October 20, 2021 internal email from the FBI’s criminal and counterterrorism divisions instructed agents to apply the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” to all investigations and assessments of alleged “threats” directed specifically at education officials.

This email also directs FBI agents to consider whether the activity being investigated violates federal law and what the potential “motivation” is behind it, demonstrating that the government will consider the viewpoints (i.e., “motivation”) of those it is investigating as part of the Attorney General’s policy.

Reports have also surfaced that federal agents have been present at school board meetings.

As alleged in the lawsuit, this “weaponization” of the Department of Justice violates federal constitutional and statutory law.