Attorney General Merrick Garland stands exposed as a liar or a fool.
He testified to Congress last month that he didn’t order the targeting of parents who criticize schools policies, let alone treat them as domestic terrorists. Now an internal Justice Department memo shows just that is under way.
Garland needs to explain his apparent perjury, pronto. And quash the efforts that the memo exposes.
Again: He told lawmakers that Justice and the FBI are not using counterterror tools to target parents, as the National School Boards Association had requested in a letter crafted with the White House. Yet House Republicans this week released a whistleblower’s bombshell e-mail — sent on behalf of the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Investigations divisions the day before the AG testified — asking agents to “apply” a “threat tag” and “track” threats against school officials.
That order followed on Garland’s instructions for US attorneys to “convene meetings” with FBI agents and local leaders to address the supposed threats from parents — which don’t actually exist. Even if the AG didn’t know his underlings were following his orders when he testified, he should have corrected himself publicly once he learned.
“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,” said Garland.
As Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote Tuesday in a blistering letter to Garland, the whistleblower’s e-mail “provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools” against parents. And the orders Garland issued came just days after the NSBA called for labeling parents “domestic terrorists” and urging Justice to use federal tools like the Patriot Act to target them.
Let’s be blunt: The feds have no business whatsoever targeting, tracking or investigating parents for opposing school policies: Even violence in such disputes is a matter for local law enforcement. (That’s why the NSBA itself apologized for its letter.)
Parents have every right to object to practices they think are bad for their kids. And a White House-led conspiracy to use anti-terror laws to scare them into shutting up is outrageous and un-American.
Garland knows this: That’s precisely why he told Congress it wasn’t happening.
But it is. And so heads need to roll — at Justice and the White House.