AG Garland accused of lying to Congress about investigation of parents

 Washington Examiner:

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“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 told the committee last October.

Now, ranking member Jim Jordan (R-OH) has identified three separate instances in which counterterrorism statutes were indeed used to open investigations into parents whose only crime was speaking at a public event about their local school. Jordan claims that a whistleblower has identified dozens of other similar cases.

In one case, the FBI interviewed a mother after an informant called the National Threat Operations Center tip line to report that a woman who belonged to a “right wing mom’s group” had told a local school board, “We are coming for you.” The mother, a member of Moms for Liberty, told the FBI she was upset about the school’s mask mandate and that the only threat she leveled at anyone was to replace the school board members at the ballot box.

In another case, an informant again utilized the National Threat Operations Center tip line to report a father who “fit the profile of an insurrectionist,” “rails against the government,” and “has lots of guns and threatens to use them." When an FBI agent interviewed the informant, the informant admitted to having “no specific information or observations of any crimes or threats.”

In the final case, a Democratic Party official used the National Threat Operations Center tip line to report that Republican state officials had “incited violence” by expressing public displeasure at a school district's vaccine mandates. Again, after opening an investigation, the FBI found nothing.

That the FBI ultimately abandoned these investigations is cold comfort. An FBI agent at your door is at minimum an unwanted disruption in anyone’s life and can be quite intimidating. At a minimum, these opened cases were a waste of Department of Justice resources, and at worst, they were a chilling example of one political party using our nation's premier law enforcement agency to silence political dissent.

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The parents' rebellion was a reflection of democracy in action as they found out some of the evils of liberalism being imposed on their kids. It was free speech being used to redress grievances against out-of-touch school officials.