President Joe Biden’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used “threat tags” under the agency’s Counterterrorism Division to conduct dozens of investigations into parents protesting at school board meetings over mask and vaccine mandates, whistleblowers revealed.
According to a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland from Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, multiple investigations targeted parents who were reported using the Justice Department’s National Threat Operations Center “snitch line.”
In one such complaint, a mother was allegedly considered a threat because she was part of a “right wing mom’s group” called “Moms for Liberty.” It was also noted that she “is a gun owner.” Agents from one FBI field office interviewed the mom for reportedly telling school board members, “we are coming for you,” which she explained meant that her organization would work to replace them through the electoral process.
Rep. Jordan told The Washington Times that more than two dozen whistleblowers contacted the House Judiciary GOP about the matter.
“You’ve got over two dozen cases that whistleblowers came to us about, that they had concerns on,” Jordan said. “If that isn’t designed to chill speech, I don’t know what does.”
Jordan said in the letter to Attorney General Garland that his department used the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” in nearly “every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings.” He also accused Garland of lying to Congress, citing testimony last year in which the attorney general claimed the Justice Department was not using counterterrorism resources to investigate parents protesting at school board meetings.
“It sure looks like this was counterterrorism measures that were put into effect,” Jordan added in his interview with the Times.
In September, the National School Boards Association, representing 90,000 school-board members, asked President Biden to direct the FBI, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security to provide protection for members facing “threats” amid ongoing tensions over COVID-19 regulations and critical race theory in the classroom. The group also requested that the federal government investigate “threats of violence” and “acts of intimidation” as possible forms of “domestic terrorism.”
Just over a week later, Biden’s Department of Justice directed the FBI to help combat “efforts to intimidate” and “threats” allegedly aimed at school officials and teachers.
“This whistleblower information is startling,” the letter to Garland added. “You have subjected these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them, the establishment of an FBI case file that includes their political views, and the application of a ‘threat tag’ to their names as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children.”
“This information is evidence of how the Biden administration is using federal law enforcement, including counterterrorism resources, to investigate concerned parents for protected First Amendment activity.”
