An internal FBI email shows that Attorney General Merrick Garland was not truthful — or at least not accurate — when he insisted that the Justice Department is not using counterterrorist tools to combat parents who are unruly at school board meetings or who threaten school board members.
The email, signed by FBI Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Timothy Langan, says that the Counterterrorism Division and Criminal Division created a “threat tag” for FBI officials to use when monitoring potential threats against school board members, teachers, and other staffers. Bureau agents, wrote Langan, should also “attempt to identify” the motivation behind alleged threats and determine whether there are “federal violations that can be investigated and charged.”
“The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels,” the email reads.
Actual threats of violence against school boards and educators are crimes and merit police involvement. They do not merit invocation of the PATRIOT Act, however, and this email calls into question Garland’s Oct. 21 testimony that he could not “imagine any circumstance” in which the FBI would use its counterterrorism powers to monitor parents who might be deemed a “threat” to their local school boards.
“Like you, I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the PATRIOT Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children, nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism,” Garland said.
Contrary to Garland’s testimony, the FBI is using its Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents suspected of making threats. Did Garland not know about this at the time of his testimony? Or did he intentionally mislead lawmakers?
Garland might believe that such investigations won’t be used against parents unless they directly threaten or harass a school board member or educator. But do you remember Scott Smith, the Loudoun County father who tried to speak up at a county school board meeting about his ninth-grade daughter’s rape this past summer? He was arrested and maliciously prosecuted by the local “woke” state’s attorney. He was physically dragged out of a building because he confronted another community member who accused his daughter of lying about the sexual assault.
Under Garland’s directive, Smith could have been subject to federal investigation as a “domestic terrorist” when, in fact, he was just a concerned and upset father trying to tell others what had happened to his 14-year-old daughter.
If you don’t think the FBI’s “counterterrorism” approach to this issue will be abused, you haven’t been paying attention. Lawmakers have every right to suspect the Biden administration’s true intentions, especially now that Garland’s testimony has been exposed as misleading. He owes Congress a more complete explanation.
