The Biden White House communicated with the U.S. Department of Justice before a 2021 memo labeled parents who spoke out about COVID-19 restrictions and LGBT curriculum during school board meetings as “domestic terrorists,” according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
America First Legal, a conservative group aligned with President Donald Trump, released documents on Friday that include emails from several DOJ lawyers concerning the National School Boards Association’s 2021 letter to the Biden administration.
In the letter, NSBA requested “federal assistance to stop threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators.” The letter claimed that “threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent — during public school board meetings,” as well as through the U.S. Postal Service and other online platforms.
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Days later, former Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum directing federal law enforcement agencies to assist local law enforcement, citing a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” as the reason for the directive.
The memo’s critics claimed that it challenged parents’ right to speak at school board meetings. When pressed about the situation by Republican lawmakers, Garland stated that the DOJ acted independently of the White House, a claim that AFL disputes, citing the documents it released.
“The Biden Administration appears to have engaged in a conspiracy that was ultimately aimed at depriving parents of two fundamental rights — the right to speak, and the right to direct the upbringing of their children,” America First Legal President Gene Hamilton said in a statement shared with The Christian Post.
“They did so with political intentions, most immediately by attempting to influence the Virginia gubernatorial election, and to more broadly chill dissent across the United States,” Hamilton added. “America First Legal has been the tip of the spear exposing this wrongdoing for nearly four years, and we will not cease seeking to expose and hold accountable those involved.”
According to the documents released by AFL, Tamarra Matthews-Johnson, a counsel in the Office of the Attorney General, forwarded press clips in an email to Kevin Chambers of the Deputy Attorney General’s Office on Oct. 1, 2021.
Matthews-Johnson wrote in the email to Chambers, “Just checking that you were aware,” which AFL claims was a reference to the NSBA letter.
“We’re aware; the challenge here is finding a federal hook. But WH has been in touch about whether we can assist in some form or fashion,” deputy attorney general aide Kevin Chambers wrote in a response to Matthews-Johnson’s email.
On Oct. 2, 2021, Sparkle Sooknanan, then of the Associate Attorney General’s Office, emailed attorneys from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. In the email, Sooknanan requested an over-the-weekend turnaround to identify “any authorities [the Civil Rights Division] enforces that could help address the issue.”
Several of the attorneys raised concerns about the DOJ taking action in response to the school board letter, according to AFL.
“I read the letter from NSBA, and looked at the links for a handful of footnotes, and it appears to me that the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law,” one DOJ attorney wrote in an email on Oct. 3, 2021, that included Robert Moossy, the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights.
The attorney argued that only three cases appeared to involve what sounded like a “possible ‘true threat,'” adding that “almost all of the language being used is protected by the First Amendment.”
“So it seems that we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently a non-federal conduct,” the attorney wrote.
According to the attorney, the response to the situation at school board meetings required “nothing remotely federal,” arguing that local trespassing and disruption of the peace laws already address issues like this one.
Despite the concerns raised by DOJ career attorneys, according to AFL, Sooknanan “pushed forward and published the now infamous Garland memo.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
