Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Whew. Your author is airplane-blogging, which on the authorial preference cascade, is somewhere just above DMV blogging and just below trying to write something intelligible in the McDonald’s play area. I am sure stewards and stewardesses have their reasons for all the rules, but let’s just say those reasons are not always obvious. I will be grateful to be home tomorrow. I might’ve skipped today altogether, but there was one story I couldn’t overlook. It’s a bookend to our story about DOJ targeting Suzie Wiles’s phone. Attorney General Todd Blanche just reminded us how Biden’s DOJ targeted all of us, too.
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It is turning into a Biden greatest hits tour. (“Greatest hits” meaning the one that are going down in flames.) Yesterday’s post discussed the Plasmic Echo disclosures, wherein Merrick Garland signed off a memo targeting Trump by tapping Suzie Wiles’ phones. We saw FBI Director Chris Wray enthusiastically endorsing it. Right after that, on Monday, DOJ dropped another disclosure. The new report proved how human snake Merrick “Grandma” Garland targeted all of us. Fox reported, “Biden’s ‘anti-MAGA task force’ sparked internal alarm across DOJ, new report shows.”
This latest release —ignored by prestige media— appeared to be timed to its anniversary. Five years ago this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland diligently scanned America’s threat horizon. He noticed the cartels. He observed the fentanyl. He noted the baby traffickers, the Muslim terror cells that snuck across the open border, and the Learing Centers, blooming across the Heartland.
Then, his blood ran cold as ice. He saw the true menace, the greatest, most pressing peril of all, bearing down on us like a high-speed train loaded with industrial explosives and driven by an infected chimpanzee.
The greatest threat facing America in October, 2021? Moms at school-board meetings.
🔥 How could you forget the moms? They hogged the nation’s microphones (in three-minute increments) and issued alarming demands like “Why is my second-grader wearing a mask at recess?” and “What, exactly, is this book?” Some of them even unleashed their mom voices, which, as the squishy effeminate men of the Biden administration (and most of the country’s fifth-grade boys) can attest, is at least arguably comparable to a sort of chemical weapon.
On Monday, the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group released its second report this week, again about a Merrick Garland memo. (Merrick Garland was second to no one in the memo-issuing department.) As AG Todd Blanche described it, in this one, Garland directed the entire FBI and Biden’s U.S. Attorneys to look for what Blanche called “a federal hook to prosecute parents exercising their right to free speech.”
In other words, however carefully he phrased it in terms of policing “threats to local officials,” Garland was actually organizing what we might euphemistically call a fishing expedition.
And this fishing trip was organized from the very top. Per the new report, a White House official asked the National School Boards Association for an advance look at its famous letter calling parents possible “domestic terrorists.” A deputy White House counsel then forwarded the NSBA’s draft letter to the Deputy AG’s office and called it “fairly urgent.” Then DOJ sent the NSBA an advance copy of Garland’s memo, proving it was all a friendly collaboration.
The White House, DOJ, and NSBA were co-authors. Isn’t that nice?
So, to recap: the school board lobby wrote the complaint, the Biden White House shepherded it through —possibly the Autopen, we aren’t sure yet— and the politically appointed Democrats at the Justice Department rubber-stamped it. Three branches of the Democrat coalition, one directive to the federal government’s law enforcement apparatus.
🔥 Upon receipt of the Garland memo, the FBI rolled up its sleeves and got to work. At least, a few “top agents” did. They opened 25 “Guardian assessments” on parents, including six run out of the Counterterrorism Division. Counterterrorism! The highly trained law enforcement personnel of the FBI’s elite counterterrorism division —who are supposed to be surveilling MS13 members coordinating terrorist attacks— were instead assigned to surveil Melissa, who coordinated the pre-K snack committee. (1 member).
Guess how many of those 25 investigations led to a prosecution? Zero. Not even one. According to a 2023 House Judiciary Committee report, the FBI never even charged anybody. Only two of the 25 even produced an investigation, and for reasons that some people might consider commonplace:
🔥 There is a slightly more encouraging part. The rot was not complete. The sharpest critics of this scheme weren’t Republicans— they were career staff. More than a dozen DOJ and FBI personnel objected in writing, albeit quietly. Kevin Driscoll, a Biden-era deputy assistant AG, wrote, “I don’t think it’s possible to state how strongly I object to this … (we) might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.” It does have a nice ring to it.
Civil Rights Division lawyer Paige Fitzgerald noted crisply that “almost all of the language being used is protected by the First Amendment.” An FBI counterterrorism official called it “potentially dangerous ground.” The chief of the Public Integrity Section deployed a legal term of art: “stupid.” A single, short email cited in this week’s report managed to call the Garland initiative “out of her lane,” “doesn’t see a role,” “a local issue,” and, bluntly, “ridiculous:”
Public Integrity Section Chief Corey Amundson, reviewing the Garland’s draft memo, went further. He complained “we did not sign up for this” and “object(ed) in the strongest possible terms,” which is bureaucratese for I really mean it but I’ll do what you want anyway. “This proposed federal effort against educator threats,” Amundson prophetically warned, “will be viewed by many as a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the (Biden) Administration.” (And so it has.)
In 2021, outside DOJ’s marbled halls, there was even more pushback. It spanned the country. Various U.S. Attorneys —all Biden appointees, mind you— expressed downright bewilderment at the DOJ’s priorities.
In short, the DOJ’s own career federal lawyers —not folks famous for sporting MAGA caps— told Merrick Garland, “Boss, this is unconstitutional, it’s political, and it’s dumb.” Going after Republicans is one thing; but this was too obvious. So Garland did it anyway. The 2023 House Report says Republicans and asked Garland to rescind his October 2021 memo, citing the poor optics and the lack of prosecutions— and Garland flatly refused.
As I said, it’s encouraging that the DOJ didn’t just roll over without complaint. But before we get too comfy, while more than a few DOJ careerists complained, quietly, they ultimately complied. They gave into Merrick Garland’s “stupid” 2021 directive. They did not stage any walkouts or quit in protest, as they did when Trump asked them to enforce immigration laws. They didn’t leak. They didn’t turn whistleblower.
Although his own Public Integrity Chief said he wanted nothing to do with it, in October 2021, AG Garland denied politics was involved in any way, and no DOJ employee publicly contradicted him. “This memo does not say to begin prosecuting anybody,” he insisted lamely. “It says to make assessments. That’s what we do in the Justice Department; it has nothing to do with politics.”
Nothing to do with politics. Just 25 assessments, six by Counterterrorism, of parents protesting covid mandates, while Homeland Security circulated a brief titled “Threats to Public Schools Likely Elevated Due to Opposition of Mask and Vaccine Mandates.” It warned, and I am not making this up, that “violent individuals who oppose maks mandates … will increasingly pose a threat to school personnel.” Increasingly.
That was 2021. It never happened. They were morons.
🔥 Nor should we ever forget that Obama had nominated Garland for the Supreme Court. Folks, we dodged a bullet. We could have been stuck with Garland for life. However his long career finally ended —still debatable— we must thank Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for rescuing us from the terrifying possibility of Justice Garland. (He’s now working for some progressive law firm. Whew.)
This kind of thing can quikcly get out of hand. Imagine the Democrats’ weaponization rule applied evenly. Imagine a Republican DOJ opening counterterrorism files on progressive parents who scream at school boards to keep mask mandates. On trans activists who shout at conservative speakers on campuses. On “No Kings” protesters.
If that ever happened, Democrats would find the First Amendment so fast it would only be visible using stop-motion photography. The ACLU would rediscover its original purpose. The New York Times would run dramatic, 14-part exposés about abuses of power.
The standard they built for our moms is one they would never, ever accept for themselves.
🔥 Todd Blanche announced the DOJ is now notifying people who were targeted by the Biden team. Anyone in the records can come and review their Guardian files. DOJ will check every file for constitutional violations, and will issue “a formal apology” wherever it finds one. (Schedules permitting, I’d be happy to visit Main Justice with any mom who wants to review her file.)
Like a thank-you note or a fruit basket, an apology is a nice gesture. But criminal referrals of sitting officials for depriving citizens of their rights would be an even nicer gesture. The problem is that no parents were ever actually charged. Only a couple folks even had formal investigations. So nobody was ever falsely arrested or wrongfully prosecuted.
But maybe … maybe Todd Blanche should launch a fishing expedition, to find some crime that we could charge. Just to be safe.
Maybe somebody should investigate that.
Finally, enjoy the postscript. The lobbying group that launched the whole thing —the National School Boards Association, the lobby that wrote the original “domestic terrorism” letter— paid a steep price. It has become a hissing and a byword. Its board was forced to apologize within weeks.
State school-board associations dropped out of the national association in droves, taking their dues money with them. Its genius leader, Chip Slaven, who’d been trading drafts with the White House, was soon shown the door. The NSBA spent the last few years as the trade-association version of a guy who has to go around telling neighbors about the restraining order.
The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they grind inexorably.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! Your author returns home later this afternoon and will be securely back in HQ tomorrow morning. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary.
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Jeff Childers keeps my head from exploding. God prevented Ms. Chardonnay Pantsuit from becoming Commander In Chief of our armed forces. Thank You.
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“I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him! Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”
— Jesus, Luke 12:4-7 NAS95
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