Tag Archive for: Justice Department

Dems ‘Tilted the Scales of Justice’ Regarding J6, Lawmaker Says

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As Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to focus on prosecuting individuals involved in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, lawmakers and experts say the administration and the Democratic Party have embellished the facts of what occurred, misallocated federal resources, unjustly prosecuted nonviolent protestors, and weaponized the incident for political gain.

On Monday, the fourth anniversary of the riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement claiming in part that “five officers … lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.” But as noted by National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, “no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot.” As he went on to write, some of the officers involved in protecting the Capitol tragically passed away after the incident as a result of medical complications and suicides, but “[n]ot a single charge of murder of a federal officer, nor conspiracy or attempt to murder a federal officer, was alleged by DOJ” related to January 6 (J6).

Despite this, Garland’s DOJ has filed charges against almost 1,600 individuals in connection with J6, with reports on Monday indicating that as many as 200 more individuals may be charged as well. As Garland acknowledged in his statement, “Over the past four years, our prosecutors, FBI agents, investigators, and analysts have conducted one of the most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in the Justice Department’s history.”

But Republican lawmakers argue that much of the narrative surrounding J6 has been distorted to paint anyone who was present at the Capitol that day as a violent “insurrectionist” and blame President Donald Trump for instigating the violence. On Monday, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss an interim report released by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight regarding J6.

“[Garland] certainly, I think, overdid it” with regard to the number of individuals charged, Griffith contended. “That’s not to say there weren’t bad actors on January 6th,” he added. “There were some, but the vast majority of folks were there to protest, but they were planning on a peaceful protest. And then, you know, everything broke loose and got out of control, but it is amazing how they don’t want to tell the whole narrative. And you know, what we need to do is tell the whole truth, right? [The] good, the bad, the ugly on both sides of this thing.”

Griffith went on to point out that Trump attempted to contain the chaos on that day with the National Guard.

“[O]ne of the biggest things that has struck me from our investigation is the fact that President Trump authorized the National Guard to come in,” he emphasized. “[But] it was the D.C. politicos … Nancy Pelosi and company who — and I can’t say that she made the decision herself — but they didn’t want to have this image of the National Guard coming in. They had bicycle racks up for a perimeter, knowing that there were going to be tens of thousands, if not more than 100,000 people in Washington that day to protest. Today, for example, they’ve been putting up for about a week … these huge fences that kept people from getting anywhere near the Capitol. None of that was done in advance [of J6].”

“Our law enforcement was not prepared,” Griffith continued. “Nobody in D.C. was prepared. And then the people who could have ameliorated this issue were left sitting on the sidelines. The National Guard was told just to sit by and wait for orders. And then even after the military folks gave the orders at the highest level, a general decided he wasn’t going to issue that order right away and held on for another couple of hours before sending in the National Guard. So we need to look at all the totality of the circumstances and look at each individual case if we’re really going to make a decision as to whether or not these people had evil in their hearts on that day. I would submit a lot of them did not.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins concurred, observing that officials took extra precautions with barricades in D.C. following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, but curiously did not implement the same security measures ahead of J6. “When you add those facts and these perceptions with what happened post January 6th with the sham investigation that took place by Nancy Pelosi and the January 6th committee, it only fuels that idea that this was politically motivated to advance a narrative.”

“I don’t think there’s any question,” Griffith agreed. “The January 6th select committee that Nancy Pelosi put together was politically motivated. I think the evidence is clear on that from the very beginning, from day one. They wanted to project that this was all Donald Trump’s fault, that he was the big bad guy, and the evidence just didn’t bear that out.”

The congressman further contended that the January 6th Select Committee “gave partial truth, and sometimes maybe even given Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, was clearly in error, if not just falsehoods. … And the witnesses who were on the scene that the January 6th Select Committee had in their possession before they issued their report was not in that report. And they should have given the American people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They chose not to do so because they had a political agenda.”

Griffith additionally noted that Pelosi kept “conservative Republicans off of the commission, who could have asked the pointed questions, who could have brought out [further] information,” further detailing that “there was about a terabyte of information that was deleted or attempted to be deleted by the J6 Select Committee. That should have gone to the archives of the United States. That’s just gone.”

“[L]et all the proper evidence in and let the chips fall where they may,” Griffith concluded. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But you know what? They didn’t do that. They tilted the scales of justice for political reasons, and it’s atrocious.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Admin Singled Out ‘Pro-Life, Pro-Family’ Americans as Terrorists, 17,000-Page Report Explains

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During its four years in office, the Biden-Harris administration conducted a whole-of-government attempt to surveil, censor, and possibly imprison conservative Christians — and the FBI acted as “a witting participant” in their harassment campaign, a massive new government report details.

The Democratic administration’s attempt to harass “pro-life, pro-family” citizens takes up a significant part of the 17,019-page report, which the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released on December 20. The efforts included painting concerned parents and “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as incipient domestic terrorists.

“The Select Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views, detailed the Justice Department’s directives to target parents at school board meetings, stopped the Internal Revenue Service from making unannounced visits to American taxpayers’ homes, caused the Justice Department to change its internal policies to respect the separation of powers and limit subpoenas for [l]egislative [b]ranch employees, and highlighted the vast warrantless financial surveillance of Americans by federal law enforcement,” states the report, which proved so sprawling it had to be released in four parts.

“The report underscores the risks posed by a weaponized federal government,” said the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), in an email sent to The Washington Stand.

Biden ‘Misused Federal Law’ to Go after Concerned Parents

Perhaps the most heavy-handed weaponization of government undertaken by the Biden-Harris administration came when it declared war on mothers and fathers who objected to having their children indoctrinated in the public school system. After teachers unions and liberal authorities closed in-person classes in government schools, parents realized the extent to which activists had smuggled critical race theory and extreme gender ideology into the curriculum. Soon, they began voicing their objections to the local school board.

“As the radical left pushed its woke agenda on America’s children, parents across the country started speaking out at school board meetings against critical race theory, unscientific mask mandates, transgender ideology in the classroom and bathroom, and anti-America curricula. Concerned parents were vocal and unafraid in their opposition to this indoctrination,” states the report. “The National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the Biden [a]dministration, however, could not abide this growing parental rights revolution and colluded to create a pretext—articulated in an October 4 memorandum from Attorney General [Merrick] Garland — to use the federal law-enforcement apparatus to silence parents.”

The report documents how Democrats “worked with education special interests to generate” the underlying basis of the directive. Specifically, the Biden administration “colluded” with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) beginning in October 2021 and “misused federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources for political purposes.” The FBI conducted 25 “Guardian assessments,” including investigating a mother because she belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group” and a father because “he rails against the government.”

“No one I spoke with in law enforcement seemed to think that there is a serious national threat directed at school boards,” one U.S. Attorney told the subcommittee.

Yet the investigations followed the memo, which Biden’s Justice Department released one month before the 2021 Virginia governor’s election. The Democratic state elected Republican Glenn Youngkin, who promised to give parents greater control over education. In their debate, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

“Despite federal law enforcement’s task to protect all Americans, the Biden-Harris [a]dministration pursued a two-tiered system of justice. … [T]he FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.”

‘Radical’ Catholics or Radical Abuse of Government?

Whistleblower Kyle Seraphin revealed the existence of a memorandum written by the FBI’s Richmond office describing an alleged tie between terrorism and “radical-traditionalist Catholic” Christians. Despite the lack of evidence to support the allegation, this purported link would allow federal agents to spy on members of a Christian denomination, remotely or in person.

The “FBI’s own internal review identified errors at every step of the drafting, review, and approval of” the document. “FBI employees could not define the meaning of ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic’ when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum. Nevertheless, this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide memorandum warning about the dangers of ‘radical’ Catholics,” notes the report. “The two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum later told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum had a political bias — sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic.”

Basing a proposed infiltration of Latin Mass parishes on such a flimsy intelligence product proves that “the FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists and that there was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship,” investigators conclude. By the time public outcry led to a public apology, the FBI had already interrogated a priest and choir director, “relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment, and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership.”

In other words, the FBI planned to place undercover informants inside churches.

“The FBI was a witting participant in the [a]dministration’s anti-parent endeavor,” the report concludes, but abusing the rights of U.S. citizens became an all-of-government undertaking. Although “the FBI has targeted its employees who hold conservative viewpoints, investigated parents at school board meetings, and sought to invade the sacred spaces of Catholic churches in the name of fighting ‘domestic terrorism,]” such “abuses are not limited to the FBI,” says the report. “Federal agencies including the IRS, the Treasury Department, and other Justice Department components like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), have misused federal funds to target Americans.”

The report also notes the government’s attempt to “prebunk” the Hunter Biden laptop story, the first-ever FBI raid on the home of a former President Donald Trump and subsequent acts of lawfare against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, government harassment of Elon Musk and Twitter (now known as X), mistreatment of whistleblowers, and the financial surveillance of American citizens.

The report’s 12,757-page appendix chronicles the subcommittee’s hearings, letters, subpoenas, depositions, and transcribed interviews.

This tome comes as the latest in a series of devastating reports chronicling the rampant corruption of the Biden-Harris administration and its enablers burrowed deep into America’s bureaucratic infrastructure. Earlier this month, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its 520-page report titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward” found nearly every COVID-19 conspiracy theory was true.

The voluminous report represents the full body of research the subcommittee has undertaken since the House of Representatives formed the 20-member investigative body, comprised of 11 Republicans and nine Democrats, in February 2023. The subcommittee acted as part of the House Judiciary Committee, also chaired by Jordan.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED PODCAST: The Legacy of Joe Biden

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Joe Biden Pardoned Hunter Biden to ‘Protect the Family Business’: Congressman

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After repeatedly insisting he would never do so, President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for any and all crimes he committed over the last decade and disdained his son’s prosecution as “a miscarriage of justice.” The president reversed course “to protect the family business” of influence-peddling and shaking down foreign leaders that netted the Biden family at least $27 million, said some of the president’s most thorough investigators.

Joe Biden announced he had offered Robert Hunter Biden “a full and unconditional pardon” on Sunday, December 1. The pardon covers “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss.”

Hunter Biden entered a guilty plea to nine federal tax charges — three felonies and six misdemeanors — related to $1.4 million in unpaid taxes on $7 million in income. The first son had also been convicted of three felony charges for lying on a federal application to purchase a handgun, when he falsely attested that he was not drug-dependent. In all, Hunter Biden faced up to 42 years in prison, although he likely would have served 52 months.

But the pardon extends far beyond the tax and gun charges, covering any crime Hunter Biden committed over the last decade, beginning from the time Hunter began his role as a conduit of payments from foreign leaders to the Biden family — an arrangement critics say sold access to the Obama-Biden White House.

But Joe Biden implied that his Republican political opponents had engineered the criminal charges in an attempt to “break” Hunter and drive him out of his sobriety. “For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth,” said the president in a statement accompanying the pardon.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” Biden contended. “[R]aw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”

The family seemingly telegraphed the pardon in an Instagram post which Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, uploaded over the Thanksgiving holiday. “They tried to break us … but never will/can. Just made us even stronger, closer, and even more grateful for one another,” wrote the first daughter. Joe Biden echoed his daughter’s words in his statement, writing: “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Joe Biden Repeatedly Promised Not to Pardon His Son

The pardon violates numerous promises from Joe Biden and his spokespeople that the president would not pardon his son of any wrongdoing. During Biden’s June 6 visit to commemorate D-Day in Normandy, an ABC News reporter asked him, “Will you accept the jury’s outcome, their verdict, no matter what it is?”

“Yes,” replied Biden weakly.

“And have you ruled out a pardon for your son?”

“Yes,” Biden repeated.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre stated at least five times over the last year that Biden would not pardon Hunter: last December 13, and this year on August 14, September 5, November 7, and recently as November 12. She also categorically ruled out the possibility that Biden would commute his son’s prison sentence.

“No one is actually surprised by the Hunter pardon. Biden’s political career was defined by abuse of power for personal gain. This was the most predictable thing ever,” said Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council. “We always knew it was a yes,” agreed Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

In fact, President-elect Donald J. Trump predicted the pardon. Fox News reporter Bill Melugin asked then-candidate Trump in October if, “in the name of unity,” he would consider pardoning Hunter Biden. “I’ll bet you the father probably pardons him. We’ll see what happens. But he’s a bad boy, no question about it,” said Trump. He went on to say he did not “want to hurt anybody” by prosecuting his political enemies, even if they are guilty — adding that ultimately, he declined to investigate Hillary Clinton for similar allegations that she funneled foreign bribes through the Clinton foundations.

“Biden pardoned his son because he knows Trump would’ve,” surmised detransitioner Chloe Cole.

But at least one veteran Republican lawmaker seemed taken aback at the news. “I’m shocked [President] Biden pardoned his son Hunter,” because he said “many times he wouldn’t,” and “I believed him,” said Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “Shame on me.”

The announcement came late on the Sunday evening of a holiday weekend — a move usually taken to minimize its news impact. Biden explained the statement came out during a holiday weekend, because “once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.”

But critical reaction from Republicans, and at least one Democrat, rained in.

‘Such a Miscarriage of Justice’

“Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice!” said President-elect Donald Trump on Truth Social.

Many harangued Biden’s social media post of May 31: “No one is above the law.”

“Unless it’s your son,” retorted Mary Vought, vice president of Strategic Communications at the Heritage Foundation.

The pardon “does complete the ark of corruption of the Biden family, doesn’t it?” asked Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, on Fox Business Monday morning. “This is a scam and a scheme, and he gussies it up in issues of family and addiction.”

Others noted the pardon weakened other aspects of the Democratic Party’s agenda. “The next time Democrats talk about increasing background checks on gun purchases please note their silence on this,” instructed former Trump White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

But the most damning critiques said President Joe Biden pardoned Hunter as a means of indirectly pardoning himself for receiving bribes from overseas, which he funneled through his son and brother, James.

Joe Biden pardoned Hunter “to protect the family business,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand on Sunday night.

“Today’s pardon is just the latest in a string of efforts by the Biden administration to cover up and dismiss the years of criminal activity committed by the Biden family,” he said, noting that “evidence has shown President Biden was not only aware but clearly complicit” in his son’s criminal activity.” Thankfully, this decision cannot and will not undermine or cover up the mountain of evidence … that has shown the level of corruption committed in a blatant attempt to trade on the name and power of political office to enrich the Biden family.”

Other congressional investigators echoed those sentiments. “Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Last August, Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) filed four articles of impeachment against Biden, one of which accuses the president of selling access to the U.S. government through Hunter Biden and his brother, Jim Biden.

10% for ‘the Big Guy’

Three House committees — the House Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Ways and Means Committee — released a 291-page impeachment inquiry report on August 19, detailing how the Biden family received at least $27 million from foreign funding over the years, as well as receiving $8 million in loans from Democratic funders. “President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift,” the report concluded. “The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the committees is egregious.”

The most explosive email noted that Hunter Biden would save 10% of his Ukrainian business deals for “the big guy,” a reference business associates confirmed identifies Joe Biden.

Congressional reports have traced millions of dollars in transfers from foreign governments to the Biden family, including:

  • $10 million from Burisma Holdings Ltd. Hunter Biden received $83,333 a month as a board member of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, despite having no knowledge of Ukraine or energy, at a time when his father served as vice president and Burisma faced a criminal probe from Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. According to the FD-1023 form obtained by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, CEO and president of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, said he paid $10 million “protection” money. A federal informant told the FBI in June 2020 that Zlochevsky told donors nothing would come of an investigation by a Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, saying, “Don’t worry, Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.” In December 2016, Joe Biden would confront then-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, leveraging $1 billion in U.S. aid to demand — and receive — Shokin’s ouster.
  • $1 million from Burisma Holdings’ corporate secretary Vadym Pozharsky to Hunter Biden, agreed to in spring 2014.
  • $3.5 million in February 2014 from Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina to the shell company Rosemont Seneca Thornton. Of that, $2.5 million went to the Bidens and $1 million went to Biden associate Devon Archer. The Obama-Biden administration did not sanction Baturina, even as it cracked down on others in Vladimir Putin’s orbit.
  • $3.1 million from Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu in 2015. Popoviciu hired Hunter Biden to cause the Obama-Biden administration to “investigate the Romanian criminal investigation into Gabriel Popoviciu and thereby cause an end to the investigation of Gabriel Popoviciu in Romania,” according to court filings from Special Counsel David C. Weiss. Hunter Biden met with Romania’s ambassador to the United States one day after Popoviciu wired $179,836.86 to a business account controlled by Robinson Walker, LLC. In all, the Romanian oligarch sent the firm $3.1 million, split between Hunter Biden and two associates, Rob Walker and James Gilliar. Hunter Biden should have registered as a foreign lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) but did not, because he was “concerned that lobbying work might cause political ramifications for the defendant’s father,” then-Vice President Joe Biden, who handled the administration’s Eastern European portfolio at the time.
  • Several million from China in two deals, the largest of which is from the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC). That deal produced the infamous text message of Hunter Biden claiming Joe Biden was seated next to him as he demanded a CEFC official wire him money.
  • $142,300 — “the exact price of Biden’s sportscar” — from Kenes Rakishev of Kazakhstan, a close associate of that nation’s prime minister, in April 2014. Hunter purchased a hybrid vehicle known as a Fisker Karma the day after the deposit.

Although President Joe Biden has continuously insisted, “I did not interact with their business partners,” Hunter Biden testified to two House committees in March that then-Vice President Joe Biden met with Burisma Corporate Secretary Vadym Pozharsky, Chinese business figure Jonathan Li, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, and Kazakhstan oligarch Kenes Rakishev between 2013 and 2015. Last August, the House Oversight Committee released a list of 16 times Biden lied about his family’s business.

Biden also assisted his son’s business endeavors as vice president, Republicans charge. Joe Biden improperly used Air Force Two and Marine Two to transport Hunter Biden to 15 countries, where he often struck business deals that financially benefited the Biden family. Vice President Biden also used pseudonymous email addresses — Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov, robinware456@gmail.com, and JRBWare@gmail.com — to include his son on official business, records show. One involved a meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, copied to Hunter Biden’s email address at Rosemont Seneca Partners (hbiden@rosemontseneca.com), one of at least 20 shell companies the Bidens established.

At least nine members of the Biden family have benefited from Hunter’s business deals, according to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.):

  • Hunter Biden;
  • James and Sara Biden, the president’s brother and sister-in-law;
  • Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle;
  • His current wife, Melissa Cohen;
  • Hunter’s ex-girlfriend, Hallie Biden, who is his brother, Beau Biden’s widow; and
  • Three unnamed children or grandchildren of Joe or James Biden.

The federal government had investigated Hunter Biden for years due, in part, to the contents of his laptop, which Democrats derided as “Russian disinformation.” U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss of Delaware allowed the statute of limitations to run out on numerous charges. The Biden administration announced last August it had appointed Weiss as special counsel to investigate the Hunter Biden scandal. Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed Weiss requested his appointment to the role which, according to the Code of Federal Regulations (28 CFR § 600.3), is supposed to be “selected from outside the United States [g]overnment.”

Sweetheart Plea Deal Scuttled

In his pardon statement, President Joe Biden lamented that “a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.” However, the plea bargain — which also shielded Hunter Biden from prosecution on any future charges — fell apart last July when federal district Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned its constitutionality.

“No amount of lies or spin can hide the simple truth that the Justice Department nearly let the President’s son off the hook for multiple felonies,” said IRS whistleblowers Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joe Ziegler in a statement Sunday night. “Anyone reading the President’s excuses now should remember that Hunter Biden admitted to his tax crimes in federal court, that Hunter Biden’s attorneys have targeted us for our lawful whistleblower disclosures, and that we are suing one of those attorneys for smearing us with false accusations.”

The two took pride that, thanks to their work, “President Biden has the power to put his thumb on the scales of justice for his son, but at least he had to do it with a pardon explicitly for all the world to see rather than his political appointees doing it secretly behind the scenes.”

House Republicans picked up the case, which had been dropped by the Biden administration. Reps. Comer, Smith, and Jordan cited Hunter Biden’s false testimony to Congress as they jointly referred him for prosecution by the Justice Department on June 5. As this author reported at The Washington Stand:

“The evidence shows that he lied under oath three times, House Republicans say. They say Hunter lied about a text he sent telling a Chinese official he and his father would use all their power against the company unless they received payment for services rendered. ‘I sent the text to the wrong Zhao,’ said Hunter, claiming he texted a man who had nothing to do with the Chinese energy company and probably had no idea what the texts were about. The committee released WhatsApp records showing Biden contacted only one Zhao, named Raymond Zhao, whom he stayed in touch with for months. Zhao facilitated the release of $5 million from China to the Biden family.

“They also say Hunter Biden fibbed when he claimed a shell company he set up with friend Devon Archer, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, was never ‘under my control nor affiliated with me.’ The committee released a document signed by the president’s son stating, ‘I, Robert Hunter Biden, hereby certify that I am the duly elected, qualified and acting Secretary of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC.’

“Biden also denied trying to help any foreign business associates obtain a U.S. visa. ‘I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa,’ he said under oath. The committee released an email from Devon Archer stating, ‘Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa.’ The individual in question, ‘Kola,’ is Nikolay Zlochevsky, CEO of Burisma.”

Many of the charges are detailed in a September 2023 episode of the “Outstanding” podcast.

Legacy Media Reaction

The legacy media covered the pardon with maximum sympathy for Biden and predictably calumniated his Republican foes. Politico.com posted, “Republicans pounce on Biden pardoning his son, Hunter.” After pushback, the website changed the headline to “Republicans say Biden is a ‘liar’ after he pardons Hunter, his son.”

Jeff Zeleny — who once asked then-President Barack Obama what aspect of being president “enchanted” him most — called the pardon “poignant” and “a striking … ending to this Thanksgiving holiday.” Zeleny added, “Clearly, there was pressure inside the family. We were told, really, in recent weeks that Dr. Jill Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, was very supportive of the president doing something like this. The president was not sure.”

Alex Thompson of Axios told Semafor.com that the unfolding criminal conspiracy was “a central drama of the Biden administration which doubled as family tragedy and a love story.” Thompson went on to ding “bad-faith conservatives trying to humiliate” Joe Biden.

As far back as June, former CNN reporter John Harwood said that “people who insist Biden will pardon Hunter after specifically ruling it out are telling on themselves,” because “they can’t imagine someone acting on principle and keeping his word.”

But not all critics of the Hunter Biden pardon belonged to the Republican Party. “While as a father I certainly understand President [Biden’s] natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D). “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden-Harris Admin. Continues Streak of Convicting and Sentencing Pro-Lifers

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The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has sentenced three more pro-life Americans for defending the unborn. On Tuesday, James Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and Paul Place were sentenced to 90 days of home detention and three years of probation for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, according to ABC News. The trio, along with Eva Edl, were convicted by a federal magistrate judge of misdemeanor FACE Act violations in April, relating to a 2021 peaceful protest outside a Nashville-area abortion facility.

Six other pro-lifers were convicted in January on FACE Act violations related to the same protest. Four of them were sentenced earlier in July. Paul Vaughn and Dennis Green were sentenced to three years of supervised release, Coleman Boyd was fined $10,000 and sentenced to five years of probation, and protest organizer Calvin Zastrow was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of supervised release. Prosecutors with the Biden-Harris administration’s DOJ had requested significantly more severe sentences, but U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger cited the motivation of the pro-lifers’ sincerely-held religious beliefs and their “good works in the community” in her sentencing.

Defendant Caroline Davis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor FACE Act violations last year and was sentenced earlier this year to three years of probation. Sentencing has been postponed for Heather Idoni, Chester Gallagher, and 89-year-old Eva Eld, who all face a trial this month in Michigan on similar charges related to pro-life protests. Edl, who survived imprisonment in a communist prison camp in Yugoslavia after World War II, told The Daily Signal in an interview that she does not expect to survive prison after having been convicted of FACE Act violations. “When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said in April. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”

Prosecution of pro-lifers has become a standard for the DOJ under President Joe Biden and his Vice President, Kamala Harris. Last year, nine pro-life activists with the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) group were convicted of FACE Act violations for protesting outside an abortion facility in the Washington, D.C. area and were immediately jailed prior to sentencing. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly commented at the time that she deemed FACE Act violations to be “crime[s] of violence.” PAAU Activism Director Lauren Handy was eventually sentenced to nearly five years in prison.

Catholic father Mark Houck was indicted in 2022 on alleged violations of the FACE Act outside a Philadelphia-area abortion facility. Although Houck agreed to cooperate with prosecutors if charges were brought, the DOJ instead sent a team of approximately two dozen FBI agents armed with automatic rifles and riot gear to raid Houck’s home and arrest him in front of his wife and children. Houck was acquitted at trial, but maintains that the raid on his home and subsequent prosecution are part of a broader effort by Biden’s DOJ to silence and intimidate pro-life Americans. According to a lawsuit filed in May, Houck’s children were traumatized by the FBI raid on their home. Houck’s is the only FACE Act prosecution case that the Biden administration has lost since taking power in 2021.

Last year, an FBI whistleblower reported that the agency had applied a special “threat tag,” originally intended to address threats against U.S. Supreme Court justices after Roe v. Wade was overturned, to pro-life Americans. According to DOJ data obtained by The Daily Caller, the Biden administration “is using a novel application of an 1870 statute to enhance the sentences of peaceful abortion protesters.” The DOJ has reportedly added “Conspiracy Against Rights” charges to FACE Act violation charges, ensuring that pro-lifers convicted of FACE Act violations face up to 10 years in prison. Additionally, 97% of FACE Act prosecutions since the law was enacted in 1994 have been against pro-life Americans, even though the law also protects churches and pregnancy resource centers.

“Once again, we see the Biden administration intent on making pro-life activists pay a high price for their attempts to protect unborn life,” said Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, in comments to The Washington Stand. “This is upsetting for the pro-lifers who received their sentence, but it is also indicative of a leftist-run DOJ that prioritizes targeting ideological opponents while ignoring attacks on churches, for example.”

According to an FRC report Del Turco authored, attacks against churches in the U.S. have increased by 800% since 2018. Between the beginning of 2018 and the end of 2023, there were over 700 vandalism attacks, 135 arson-related attacks, over 30 bomb threats, over 20 gun-related incidents, and a myriad of other attacks, assaults, and threats — all against churches. CatholicVote’s “Violence Tracker” reports that nearly 300 Catholic churches have been attacked since May of 2022, shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Erin Hawley, vice president of the Center for Life and Regulatory Practice at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), noted that, at least over the course of 2022, no prosecutions were made against those who attacked churches or pregnancy resource centers, although 26 pro-life Americans were targeted with FACE Act prosecutions that year. Since Biden took office in 2021, there have been 55 FACE Act prosecutions, only five of which involved violent attacks against pregnancy resource centers. In total, the Biden administration’s FACE Act prosecutions over the course of less than four years accounts for a quarter of all FACE Act prosecutions over the past 30 years.

“This is particularly relevant now as the election season ramps up,” Del Turco observed, pointing to Vice President Harris’s complicity in the administration’s targeting of pro-life Americans. She recalled that Harris aggressively prosecuted reporter David Daleiden when he published video evidence that “Planned Parenthood was selling the body parts of aborted babies.” Del Turco pointed out that Planned Parenthood was donating to Harris’s senate campaign at the time. “If Harris is elected president, we can expect the attacks on pro-lifers that we’ve seen over the last four years to continue, or perhaps worsen,” Del Turco concluded.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Has Biden weaponised the Justice Department to pursue a morally bankrupt agenda?

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It is a understatement to observe that the Biden administration’s moral compass is broken beyond repair.

Earlier this month, Biden’s Department of Justice proudly announced that 75-year-old Paula Paulette Harlow will serve two years in prison for taking part in a “conspiracy” to block access to a Washington DC abortion clinic. Harlow is the last of ten protesters to be sentenced for the October 2020 demonstration.

The Biden DOJ is also slated to slap six other pro-life demonstrators with up to 11 years in prison for a separate protest staged in Tennessee in 2021.

Mark Houck is another pro-lifer to have faced the wrath of Biden’s DOJ. Following a scuffle with a Planned Parenthood escort, Houck was ambushed at his home early one morning by a 25-strong SWAT team armed in tactical gear. His wife and seven children watched as their Catholic father was hauled away in humiliation. Fortunately, Houck’s case resulted in an acquittal and he is now suing the Justice Department for the traumatising affair.

But President Joe Biden is not just after pro-lifers.

In October 2021, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI and US attorneys to go after school parents who had begun vocally pushing back against gender madness at school board meetings across the country, despite no violence being reported at said meetings.

In November of the same year, Biden used his DOJ and the FBI to raid the homes of two journalists believed to be in possession of a diary belonging to his daughter Ashley Biden. Such extreme use of federal force would hardly be countenanced had its author not been a member of the president’s family.

In more recent times, top Biden DOJ official Matthew Colangelo abruptly quit his DC post to take on a much lesser role in the highly politicised New York lawsuit that successfully indicted Biden’s leading presidential challenger Donald Trump.

If all these events didn’t churn enough stomachs, consider the story of Eithan Haim, a courageous surgeon-turned-whistleblower who alerted the public to transgender surgery taking place at Texas Children’s Hospital.

The hospital was vocally supportive of so-called “gender medicine” until public pressure forced CEO Mark Wallace to shut down the clinic. In secret, however, a band of surgeons continued administering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and Frankensteinish surgery to children as young as 11.

Last year, Dr Haim provided an anonymous tip and damning documents to journalist Christopher Rufo, prompting a media firestorm that led Texas lawmakers to ban the practice before the week was out.

Soon, Dr Haim learned that he was being targeted by federal prosecutors for his whistleblowing, at which point he decided to go public, sitting down for an hour-long interview with Rufo in January this year.

Earlier this month, Haim was greeted at his home by US marshals issuing him with a court summons on four felony counts of violating HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Dr Haim is yet to learn the extent of the charges he faces, but as reported by the National Review, the case against him seems rather suspect:

Rufo, who reviewed the records himself before publishing the initial article, denies that the documents exposed the personal information of patients. “For my own part, I can confirm that nothing in the information provided to me identified any individual; all the documents were, in fact, carefully redacted,” the journalist wrote in his latest City Journal story, in which he broke the news that Haim had been indicted.

Assistant US attorney for the Southern District of Texas Tina Ansari, whose office is leading the criminal investigation, argues Haim had no right to share the medical records of minor patients with the public.

However, she neglected to mention that the documents disclosed were not patient charts, were redacted to protect sensitive patient information, and complied with HIPAA, which permits anonymized information to be disclosed generally, and even protected information can be publicized if it’s used to stop egregious medical misconduct.

Dr Haim will face court next Monday.

In the meantime, Americans are left to ponder the machinations of a woke White House that is yet to find a norm it won’t violate in pursuit of a morally bankrupt agenda.

Separation of powers be damned, Biden will enjoy full use of his personal police force and continue burning the country to the ground to rule over the ashes — until November at least.

Is this narrative just connecting unconnected dots? Or does it reflect what you think?

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg is a husband, father, freelance writer, and a familiar Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He is the Senior Editor at Australia’s largest Christian news site The Daily Declaration and a Contributing Editor at Mercator. His writings can also be found at Intellectual Takeout, The American Spectator and the Spectator Australia. He has authored or co-authored five books, including his breakout title Cross and Culture: Can Jesus Save the West?

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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Gun Groups Sound Alarm About New DOJ ‘Red Flag’ Law Center

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Gun groups are sounding the alarm about the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) new center aimed at helping states enforce red flag laws.

The DOJ launched its National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center on Saturday to offer assistance to law enforcement officials, social services providers and others who implement red flag laws, which permit judges to temporarily strip individuals deemed a risk to themselves or others of their ability to possess firearms. The center, which will be run by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, was started with a $2 million DOJ grant funded through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) passed in 2022, according to the White House.

“Red flag laws are inherently a violation of the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments because they allow for the confiscation of legal firearms from law-abiding citizens without due process based on anonymous accusations,” the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Thus, they have no place in American Jurisprudence.”

President Joe Biden and the DOJ will use the center to “continue their abuse of the constitutional rights of all Americans,” NAGR said.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in the center’s announcement that it was “the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”

“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others,” Garland said.

Twenty-one states, along with the District of Columbia, have passed ERPO laws, according to the DOJ’s press release.

NAGR Vice President Ryan Flugaur told the Daily Caller News Foundation his organization blames Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who led Republican negotiations on the bill, for the “mess.” Flugaur said it should stop Cornyn from becoming the next Republican Senate leader.

Fifteen Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the BSCA in 2022.

Gun Owners of America Director of Federal Affairs Aidan Johnston told the DCNF the office was “being created simply to pressure and bribe states into adopting these laws in exchange for more federal money.”

“For example, Michigan enacted a gun confiscation law within a few months of receiving a Cornyn-Murphy ‘grant.’” he said. “The People should demand their state lawmakers push back and never sell out your rights for 30 pieces of silver.”

Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the state’s red flag bill into law in May 2023. The state was awarded a $7,945,884 DOJ grant in February 2023 “to help combat gun violence and enhance behavioral health and crisis care programs,” which was made possible through the BSCA.

Thirty-three members of Congress, led by Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall and Republican West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney, alleged in a letter last July that the DOJ illegally gave grant money to states that did not have red flag laws to “create and implement extreme risk protection order programs.”

“Every single ‘red flag’ gun confiscation law in the United States lacks due process because the government can convene a hearing and take your firearms away without you or your attorney ever being present to counter the claims being made,” Johnston told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Gun Owners Of America Comes Out Swinging Against John Cornyn After He Announced Bid For Senate Leader

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Devastating’: Hur’s Testimony Confirms Biden Committed Espionage, Says Legal Expert

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During a heated congressional hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Special Counsel Robert Hur testified that his February report on President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents “did not exonerate” the president of a potential crime, despite the fact that Hur’s report did not recommend criminal charges against Biden. Legal experts say the hearing further confirmed a series of illegal actions that Biden allegedly took while in public office.

“[Hur’s] testimony is devastating for President Biden,” Mike Davis told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on Tuesday. “President Biden knowingly, willfully retained classified documents illegally. He shared those classified documents with his ghostwriter. When they got caught and a special counsel was appointed, the ghostwriter deleted that classified recording of then Vice President Joe Biden. Sharing these classified records with his ghostwriter — that’s espionage. That’s obstruction of justice. Robert Hur acknowledged that President Biden lied to the American people when he [stated] he didn’t share this classified information with his ghostwriter.”

A National Review report further noted the fact that the White House attempted to tone down Hur’s report before it was released. When House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Hur if the White House had tried to “get the report changed,” he admitted, “They did request certain edits and changes to the draft report.”

Davis, an attorney and the founder of the Article III Project, went on to provide insight as to why Hur did not end up recommending charges against Biden.

“Remember, Robert Hur is James Comey’s protégé, and James Comey did the same thing with Hillary Clinton’s illegal home server with our nation’s most classified secrets,” he pointed out. “Comey came out and said, ‘Yeah, Hillary essentially violated the Espionage Act, but no reasonable jury would find her guilty of that.’ So it’s the same game that Robert Hur is playing here. … I would say that there is a slam dunk case of Espionage Act violations against President Biden, and Robert Hur did Biden a huge favor by not recommending that there is a criminal indictment against Biden when he leaves office.”

Davis, who previously served as chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), also emphasized that the Democrats’ insistence that Hur unfairly targeted Biden’s poor memory could backfire.

“If Biden and his allies think that Robert Hur was wrong and [Biden] does have the mental capacity to stand trial, then [if] Trump [is elected in November, his] Justice Department can bring Espionage Act charges against President Biden after January 20, 2025,” he explained. “Now remember, Merrick Garland is the person who made the decision to bring the unprecedented charges against President Trump for the non-crime of a former president having his presidential records in the office of former president, which is allowed by the Presidential Records Act. The former president’s office is guarded by the Secret Service. He gets federally-funded staff. They have security clearances. Contrast that with Biden, who had at least five stashes — maybe six — of stolen classified records from his time as vice president, even his time as a senator, meaning he had to have stolen these classified records out of the Senate. Schiff and Merrick Garland did not bring charges against his boss, Joe Biden.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Chairman Jordan brought up further details based on Hur’s report that shed light on why Biden, who was “deeply familiar” with laws surrounding classified documents, would knowingly take them unlawfully — likely in order to provide material to write a book for the purpose of fulfilling a book deal.

Davis echoed Jordan’s observation. “Joe Biden [stole] classified records he had as senator and vice president, stolen classified records that he used for his financial advantage,” he asserted. “He got an $8 million advance to write his book. That’s why he had some of these stolen classified records. The New York Post’s Miranda Devine also reported that Hunter Biden almost certainly used stolen classified records to write a 23-paragraph geopolitics memo to Burisma to secure millions of dollars in corrupt funding to the Bidens. The Bidens stole classified records and used them for their financial gain.”

Davis concluded by predicting that the Democrats’ attempts to paint former President Trump as a criminal during Tuesday’s hearing in order to distract from the case against Biden will backfire.

“[T]he American people are waking up to this,” he contended. “This lawfare and election interference is going to end on November 5th, 2024, when the American people say, ‘We get to decide who’s the president of the United States, not Democrat prosecutors and Democrat judges and Democrat juries. … We get to decide the American election.’ And it’s not going to go well for the Democrats.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Democrats Had Two Goals Going Into Hur Hearing. They Failed At Both

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Prosecution of Pro-Lifers Continues under Biden’s DOJ, with 6 More Convictions

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On Tuesday, a guilty verdict was announced for six pro-life activists for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act at an abortion facility near Nashville, Tenn. The Biden administration’s Justice Department brought the charges, which stemmed from a peaceful protest on March 5, 2021, in which a group of pro-lifers prayed and sang hymns at the entrance to the Carafem Health Center Clinic.

Video of the protest shows a group of approximately 20-30 pro-life activists peacefully praying and singing hymns while standing and sitting along the walls of a hallway leading to the door of the abortion facility, with a small segment of the group sitting directly in front of the facility’s entrance. Roughly two hours into the vigil, a number of protestors were arrested for blocking the entrance without incident.

In October 2022, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was charging 11 individuals involved in the protest with violating the federal FACE Act, which bars individuals from physically blocking the entrance to an abortion facility. Six of the defendants were eventually convicted on Tuesday, with each facing “up to a maximum of 10 and a half years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $260,000,” with sentencing set for July 2. Four other defendants are scheduled to stand trial for misdemeanor violations of the FACE Act.

The Thomas More Society, which is representing the defendants, is expected to appeal the convictions.

The DOJ’s FACE Act prosecutions are the latest in a series of legal actions directed at pro-life activists under the Biden administration, in which at least 24 cases have been prosecuted since January 2021. At the same time, there have only been four FACE Act indictments of pro-abortion individuals related to a single attack on a pregnancy resource center in Florida, despite the fact that there have been hundreds of attacks that have occurred against churches and pregnancy resource centers during Biden’s tenure.

As noted by Family Research Council’s Arielle Del Turco during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last year, the FACE Act was originally designed to protect abortion facilities, pregnancy resource centers, and places of worship. The types of attacks committed against churches have included “vandalism, arson, bomb threats, gun-related incidents, and interruption of worship services — all of which are punishable under the FACE Act,” she emphasized.

The disparity in prosecutions has led to Congress taking notice. In October, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced a bill to repeal the FACE Act, citing the biased enforcement that is being carried out by the Biden administration. “We need to repeal it and then stop giving authority to the Department of Justice to be able to go after [pro-life] people,” he told Tony Perkins in September.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, questioned the priorities of the Biden administration’s DOJ in targeting pro-lifers amid a spiraling border crisis and the spreading conflict in the Middle East.

“As countless little boys and girls are being trafficked across the border and wars wage across the world, the Biden administration thinks the most important thing to focus on is prosecuting peaceful protestors attempting to save unborn babies from a brutal death,” she pointed out. “Yes, these protestors violated the FACE Act, but the Biden administration should consider spending taxpayer dollars to protect America’s border — not to stop non-violent men and women who are simply singing hymns while defending the unborn.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Report Catalogues Dozens of New Incidents of Persecution against Christians in the West

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Sympathy for J6 Protestors Growing amid Election Integrity Concerns

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Nearly half of Americans believe the U.S. Capitol protestors on January 6, 2021, had a point. According to a new Suffolk University/USA Today poll, a combined total of 43% of registered voters agreed that Capitol protestors “had a point,” with 37% of respondents adding that the protestors “went too far.”

Suffolk’s analysis of the data said “sympathy” had increased for the protestors, noting, “Only 48% of voters overall said they thought the rioters were ‘criminals,’ a significant drop from the 70% of voters who thought so in a Suffolk survey conducted just weeks after [January 6].” Suffolk added, “Those who agreed that ‘they went too far, but they had a point’ rose to 37% from 24%, and 6% called their actions ‘appropriate,’ when in 2021 just 2% did.”

Additionally, nearly a third (32%) of respondents stated that the criminal charges leveled against over 700 protestors are “inappropriate and should be reversed.” Over 1,200 protestors have been charged for their participation in the events at the Capitol, with over 745 defendants having been sentenced already. Republicans have been critical of the Biden administration’s treatment of protestors. After visiting a prison where protestors were held in custody, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called the protestors “political prisoners of war” and attested that their treatment was “abuse.” Greene also explained that prisoners are being kept in solitary confinement, asserting:

“They have been beaten by the guards [and] they are called white supremacist. They are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, the ability to trim their fingernails. There’s more outrageous things happening there. They’re denied time with their attorneys. They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there. They are denied bail and being held there without bail.”

In November, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) made public hundreds of hours of previously-unreleased video footage of the January 6 Capitol events, which included footage of police officers opening doors for protestors and guiding them down hallways. A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released earlier this week showed that a quarter of American adults believe the FBI was involved in either instigating or organizing the breach of the Capitol building, including 13% of Democrats.

The Suffolk University/USA Today poll also reported that less than half (43%) of Americans are confident “that the results of the 2024 election will be accurately counted and reported,” while 27% are “not confident.” Additionally, 31% of respondents stated that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020. This follows a report that one in five mail-in voters admitted to committing fraud in the 2020 election, as well as numerous reports on the federal government skirting the Constitution to censor Americans’ political speech.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Jan 6 “Pipe Bomb” Truth with Darren Beattie

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden DOJ Imports Ukrainian-Style Corruption

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A third felony indictment targeted former President Donald Trump Tuesday, as U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Counsel Jack Smith persuaded a D.C.-based grand jury to indict Trump on four felony counts for his actions to contest the results of the 2020 election. Trump already faces felony indictments from Smith in a Florida federal court for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for buying a former mistress’s silence. Both the process of indicting a former president and the charges themselves savor more of Ukrainian-style corruption than they do of American-style peaceful transition of power.

In the third indictment, Trump has been charged with four crimes: “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States,” “Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding,” “Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding,” and “Conspiracy against Rights.” But not everyone is convinced by the evidence presented. “I felt that the Mar-a-Lago indictment was strong. This is the inverse,” said law professor Jonathan Turley. “It’s 45 pages of First Amendment protected activity broken up by four captions listing conspiracy statutes that do not apply,” summarized lawyer and retired colonel Kurt Schlichter.

In fact, “It is far from clear that any law was broken,” agreed National Review’s (NR) Dan McLaughlin (who said in the same paragraph that “the Senate should have convicted him in his impeachment trial”). “But crimes,” he added, “are supposed to be about the law — which has to be plain enough to govern us all.” Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, also no Trump fanboy, said Smith “extravagantly stretched these statutes” to try and cover Trump’s behavior, and he tellingly stopped short of charging Trump with inciting a riot on January 6, 2021. “If you’ve got evidence that Trump committed incitement, then charge him with incitement,” McCarthy said. To dive deeper into the faults of the indictment, the NR editors compiled an excellent though lengthy analysis.

As many wiser heads have already noted, the exercise of jailing political opponents is a trademark of oppressive regimes with little respect for the rule of law — not an ordinary feature of American political life. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to Ukraine’s recent history — a history which relatively few Americans know.

Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union as the autocratic federation dissolved in 1991. However, Ukraine inherited its culture of corruption and maintained close economic and political ties to Moscow for years. Had history unfolded differently, Ukraine could have resembled the neighboring Russian puppet state of Belarus. That began to change with what is known as the Orange Revolution of 2004.

In Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election, the pro-West opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko challenged the pro-Russia incumbent prime minister Viktor Yanukovich (like many parliamentary systems, Ukraine has both a popularly elected president and a prime minster chosen by the largest parliamentary coalition). At first, Yanukovich narrowly won in a run-off election, amid allegations of vote rigging and intimidation. After massive street protests, the country’s Supreme Court vacated the election results, and Yushchenko won the second run-off election. Yushchenko and Yanukovich remained the two most important figures in Ukrainian politics for the next decade.

Yanukovich won back the job of prime minister in 2006 after a minor party switched coalitions, and in 2007 President Yushchenko dissolved the parliament to stem his waning influence there. Naturally, his opponents challenged this move as unconstitutional, but when the matter came before the Constitutional Court, Yushchenko charged three of the judges with corruption and had them dismissed. This only served to drive his popularity even lower. By the 2010 presidential election, Yushchenko’s coalition had split, and his former ally Yulia Tymoshenko jumped in to make it a three-way race, and Yushchenko finished in a distant third place, while Yanukovich won.

Newly elected President Yanukovich then had his new rival, Tymoshenko, arrested in 2011 and sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office, behavior loudly condemned by Western powers. The European Union foreign office said “justice was being applied selectively in Ukraine under political motivation,” while the Obama White House responded, “The charges against Mrs. Tymoshenko and the conduct of her trial … have raised serious concerns about the government of Ukraine’s commitment to democracy and rule of law.”

In 2014, Yanukovich’s efforts to steer Ukraine away from the West and back towards Russia sparked widespread protests, leading him to flee the country (his successor as president, Petro Poroshenko, continued the pattern of corruption). Moscow then invaded and annexed Crimea and supported irregular forces in the eastern Donbas region, eight years before its attempt to invade the rest of Ukraine — and that brings us up to the present.

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to you? Contested elections thrown to the courts, allegations of vote rigging, mass street protests, and a political opponent imprisoned due to political, selective application of justice — these are symptoms of innate Ukrainian corruption, but they also appear in the U.S.

In fact, the Ukrainian people got so fed up with the endless corruption of their political class that in 2019 they elected as president a TV star with no political experience. (I could have sworn I’ve read this script somewhere before.)

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s fledgling, corrupt business world offered an enticing prospect to unscrupulous foreigners looking to make a quick buck (or rather millions of bucks). In 2014, Hunter Biden, who has no experience in energy business, joined the board of a Ukrainian oil company called Burisma and collected a monthly income of up to $50,000, nearly equal to the U.S. median annual salary.

At the time Biden joined Burisma’s board, his father, Vice President Joe, led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, and Burisma was under investigation for corruption. Soon after, then-Prosecutor General Victor Shokin, the official investigating Burisma was fired. Joe Biden boasted in 2018 that the Poroshenko administration fired Shokin because he threatened to withhold $1 billion in foreign aid unless they did so.

As Joe Biden told the story, “I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in’ — I think it was, what, six hours? — I looked, and I said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a —–, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid.”

Shokin was succeeded as Ukraine’s Prosecutor General by Yuriy Lutsenko, who had been convicted of embezzlement and abuse of office in 2012 and implicated in a poisoning attempt against Yushchenko. During his tenure as prosecutor general, he obstructed the investigation into Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman who failed to register as a foreign agent while working for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and was later convicted on money laundering charges. It’s good to know the sort of character President Biden described as “solid.”

In an ironic twist, President Trump was impeached (the first time) for a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he made as part of an effort to uncover evidence of the Biden family’s corrupt dealings in that country. The notion that a sitting president would use his official position to dig up evidence of crimes by his chief political rival seemed beyond the pale to a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives at the time. By contrast, no member of the Biden family has yet suffered any consequences for their corrupt dealings in Ukraine or any other foreign nation.

Corruption in American politics has ebbed and flowed throughout her 247-year-long history, and election tampering has too. Yet few observers would dispute that both are currently at a high tide. What other conclusion is there when, recent events in American politics mimic those of a fledgling democracy still struggling to wriggle free of Soviet-era corruption?

Fortunately, by construction and longstanding tradition, the U.S. legal system is stronger than that of Ukraine’s. There are still officials willing to stand up to defend equal justice before the law, due process, the peaceful transfer of power, and fundamental human rights. The public still, by and large, values and expects government officials to abide by these principles. So, it’s conceivable that a political prosecution that would succeed in Ukraine’s judicial system will fail — or even backfire — in the U.S. But no free and open system of government can withstand the constant abuse of those who wield power in it forever. Sooner or later, the abuse must cease, or freedom will.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Lawyer Says He’ll Use ‘Very Simple’ Strategy Of Pointing Out Jack Smith ‘Has The Entire Law … Wrong’

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An attorney for former President Donald Trump said Thursday that Trump’s defense will use a “very simple” strategy should charges over the 2020 election be brought to trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges during his Thursday arraignment after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment of Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election. Smith previously secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June based on an investigation into allegations surrounding classified documents.

“The legal strategy in this case I think is very simple: You attack the facts that Jack Smith put out that are wrong for instance, Jack Smith claiming, as you already pointed out, that Donald Trump did anything other than call for peace and patriotism on January 6th is wrong,” attorney Jesse Binnall told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday evening. “And then you attack the law, because Jack Smith has the entire law in this case wrong, and more importantly, he is ignoring the Constitution of the United States.”

WATCH:

“Here is how: The First Amendment gives you the right to speech, something that Jack Smith’s prosecutors are completely ignoring, but more than that, it also gives you the right to petition Congress for redress of grievances,” Binnall continued. “And in this case, when you are saying there was fraud in the election, there are problems in the election and we think you should seat electors X, instead of electors Y, that’s why the first petition clause clearly protects.”

Legal experts noted that much of the conduct Smith claimed was criminal in the indictment appeared to be protected by the First Amendment. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz said that the indictment not only attacked the First Amendment, but also Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

“Jack Smith is terrified that Donald Trump is going to be elected again because Jack Smith is actually the one terrified of democracy because democracy would bring accountability for him and quite honestly his out-of-control prosecutors in an out of control Justice Department,” Binnall added.

Trump’s top rivals for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all condemned the indictment.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

President Biden’s Disqualifying Filial Affection

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The adults are back in charge, and normalcy is restored to Washington. White House evacuations, profanity-laced rants, disavowal of family members, corruption of justice, hard drugs — that’s what normal means, right?

The U.S. Secret Service evacuated the White House last Sunday evening after a small bag of white powder, later determined to be cocaine, was discovered. At least three different locations have been suggested as the place where the bag of powder was found. On Tuesday, the Secret Service informed Bloomberg Business investigative reporter Jason Leopold that they could not, in fact, disclose records “referencing the cocaine found in the West Wing of the White House,” as “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

But if investigators have a lead on who left cocaine in the White House, they haven’t tipped their hand. Last Wednesday, Politico quoted an unnamed law enforcement official suggesting it is unlikely the culprit will be caught. “Even if there were surveillance cameras, unless you were waving it around, it may not have been caught” by cameras, the official said. “It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all the time.”

But entering the White House is not like crossing the southern border. Federal law enforcement performs a prior background check on every staffer, intern, and visitor. Those with security clearances face a more strenuous investigative process — and using hard drugs would be grounds for immediate revocation and termination — while even interns are fingerprinted and tested for drugs. Security for the West Wing is even more stringent; visitors (restricted to certain times and numbers) and interns (thanks to President Clinton) are not allowed to waltz through without a staff escort. Meticulous record-keeping and visitor logs should enable the Secret Service to rapidly narrow the pool of suspects.

Unless, that is, the culprit was a member of the executive family — exempt from visitor logs and the usual screening protocols. That would make the investigation, if not harder, a more sensitive affair.

One member of the president’s family has a public history of cocaine use: Hunter Biden, the president’s son. The younger Biden (who is in his 50s) wrote in his memoir about a low point in his life when he was “smoking crack every 15 minutes.” His laptop, abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, also provides evidence of his addiction, among other crimes and immorality. He was kicked out of the Navy in 2013 and out of a strip club in 2019, both for drug use. (In 2018, he answered the question, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” in the negative, on a form to purchase a handgun, which he subsequently lost after his girlfriend — also his brother’s widow — threw it in a trashcan across the street from a high school.)

That isn’t to say that the cocaine found in the White House belonged to Hunter Biden. There could be other suspects, another cause, or a bulletproof alibi. But National Review’s Jim Geraghty has pointed out that he is at least a natural target for suspicion. In response to a question along that line, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that even asking if the cocaine belonged to Hunter or another Biden family member “is actually incredibly irresponsible.” At the very least, this response does not incite public confidence that the investigation is going forward with the open-mindedness required to maximize the likelihood of success.

In fact, Geraghty also noted that Hunter Biden somehow avoided prosecution for the near-constant possession and use of cocaine (federally and locally illegal) during years in which his father’s high ranking public offices placed him in frequent proximity to law enforcement. “We have this odd situation of a top government official’s son who, in his own description, was constantly doing drugs, and regularly around law-enforcement agents with drug-sniffing dogs, who somehow never got caught,” he wrote. “Remarkable luck!”

Hunter’s “luck” rolls on like a casino’s. Last month, Hunter Biden was facing decades of jail time, as an investigation the Justice Department (DOJ) could no longer slow-walk found itself in possession of strong evidence that Hunter had committed multiple felonies — in addition to lying on the firearms form, Hunter Biden also failed to pay his taxes for multiple years, not to mention his influence peddling in foreign countries. Instead of charging him with any felonies, the DOJ allowed Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and avoid jail time in a probation deal that suspends any other prosecution while he abides by his probation terms.

Of course, there is an obvious conflict-of-interest in officials who serve at the will and pleasure of President Joe Biden supervising the criminal prosecution of his son. Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland was “duty-bound” by law to appoint a special counsel in the Hunter Biden case, yet he did not do so. Instead, Garland delivered an “intentionally provocative” sweetheart deal for the president’s son just as the DOJ was unveiling a politically inflammatory prosecution of a former president and current presidential candidate.

In an added twist, the DOJ unsealed an indictment this week against Gal Luft, believed to be a witness in the U.S. House investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign influence-peddling, charging him with violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ seems determinedly uncurious about the foreign business dealings of the Biden family, despite a suspicious number of large bank transfers. Luft advised a now-defunct Chinese energy company for four years, while Hunter Biden had business dealings with the company. Luft contacted the FBI and DOJ as early as 2019 and offered to provide them with evidence of Hunter Biden’s misdoings.

Throughout the scandals, President Joe Biden has stuck by his son Hunter, categorically declaring in May, “my son has done nothing wrong,” even though he authored the gun law Hunter violated. Only days after pleading guilty to misdemeanors, Hunter appeared at a White House state dinner. Could these public declarations of support have any influence on the conduct of government officials who report to the president?

The optics are so poor that even NBC News is concerned:

“The public displays of parental support, to the dismay of some Democrats, aren’t just about a loving father or a stubborn president’s defiance. For Biden, keeping his son — a recovering drug addict — close means keeping him safe, people close to the president say. Behind the Hunter Biden photo-ops and the state dinner invitations, they say, is an existential concern that weighs on the president daily: If he loosens his grip on his son, who or what will replace it — and to what end? ‘It’s consumed him,’ a person close to the president said.

Of course, helping a recovering drug addict to make good choices is not a bad thing. But President Biden seems to have taken the concept a bit too far. President Biden reportedly refuses to hear advice about Hunter from well-meaning aides. Again, from NBC:

“President Joe Biden has made it clear to his closest aides in no uncertain terms that he not only will reject any political advice that he try to limit his son Hunter’s public visibility but that he also doesn’t want to hear such suggestions, according to three people familiar with the discussions. His message, as one of the sources described it, was: ‘Hands off my family.’”

The aides would do well to heed the warning. Axios recently reported that, “behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him.” His go-to admonitions are too laced with profanity to be reprinted here. Out of the media’s eye, the ice cream-licking back-slapper is a different person altogether.

Loyalty to one’s family is not a bad quality, but Joe Biden only extends it to some family members. In fact, President Biden has refused to acknowledge his relationship to one of his grandchildren so often that even the mainstream media is starting to notice.

An affair between Hunter Biden and a former stripper produced a little girl, Navy Joan Roberts, born out-of-wedlock in 2018. A 2020 paternity test (which he tried to dodge) proved he is her father. After he was sued for child support, Biden continued to fight a losing legal battle in Arkansas family court. Eventually, he gave the child’s mother some of his overpriced paintings in exchange for denying his daughter the right to use the Biden family name (can you imagine your own father doing that to you?).

Navy Joan is Biden’s seventh grandchild, yet Biden insisted again, recently, that he has “six grandchildren, and I’m crazy about them — I speak to them every single day; not a joke.” At least he doesn’t send mean tweets.

There’s loving and defending your family, and then there’s the way that Joe Biden treats Hunter. When it comes to Hunter, Joe Biden seems to lack proportionality, propriety, or the ability to take advice. Proverbs 13:10 warns, “by insolence comes nothing but strife, but with those who take advice is wisdom.”

But family loyalty should not be a trump card to all other values. In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Moses instructs the Israelites that if a son is persistently stubborn and rebellious, the penalty is death, and his own parents should initiate the legal proceedings against him. The stated purpose is, “so you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” Such a drastic law demonstrates the importance of righteousness. In America today, we live in a different context where disobedience is not (and should not be) a capital crime. The lesson for us today is that righteousness and justice are more important than even the closest familial ties.

The jury is still out on how closely Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s foreign business dealings as vice president, but he has clearly used his position as president on his son’s behalf. And even if this isn’t corruption in a legal sense or serious enough to warrant impeachment, everyone understands this is a political issue. That is why the DOJ leaned on social media companies to suppress the New York Post’s original reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. That is why a Biden aide said last week, when asked whether the White House cocaine belonged to Hunter, answered, “I don’t have a response to that because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act” (the Hatch Act prevents federal officials from using their official positions for campaign purposes). And that is why Hunter Biden will continue to make news as long as his father remains in the White House.

That Joe Biden seems unable to keep this perspective with regard to his son Hunter cast doubt on his ability to faithfully execute his office, or even uphold his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. Is there nothing he won’t do for his son?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Extensive Collusion’: House Committee Report Confirms DOJ Targeting of Parents

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The Department of Justice “extensively colluded” with a special interest group to “manufacture” a supposedly sweeping threat against school personnel posed by parents, a House Subcommittee interim staff report has found. Experts say the findings further confirm what DOJ officials have denied — that the government worked behind the scenes to undermine a grassroots movement of outspoken parents concerned about their children being exposed to controversial racial and gender theories and mask mandates at school.

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released its findings regarding the controversial memo issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland in October 2021 to “federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement,” in which he ordered the FBI to coordinate investigations of parents due to an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

The subcommittee report reveals that the National School Boards Association (NSBA) “collaborated with the Biden White House to develop the language of the NSBA’s September 29, 2021 letter to President Biden urging the use of federal law enforcement and counterterrorism tools, including the Patriot Act, against parents.” The NSBA letter suggested that parents should be investigated for “domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” which it later apologized for.

Five days after the NSBA letter was sent to Biden, Garland issued the contentious memo. Two weeks later, the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions announced the creation of a new threat tag for the investigation — “EDUOFFICIALS.” One related investigation by an FBI field office targeted “a dad opposed to mask mandates” who “fit the profile of an insurrectionist.” When the FBI interviewed the complainant who reported the dad, they admitted they had “no specific information or observations of . . . any crimes or threats.”

As a direct result of Garland’s memo, the report found that federal law enforcement used “counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity.” The FBI later revealed that it had “opened 25 ‘Guardian assessments’ with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag.” Of these 25 investigations, “the FBI determined that only one warranted opening a ‘Full Investigation,’ and referred the majority of the remaining cases to state and local authorities. There have still been no federal prosecutions.”

The report went on to note that “[t]he overwhelming majority of judicial districts reported not having heard of any instances of threats or violence being levied at school board officials. One U.S. Attorney reported that threats against school officials was ‘described by some as a manufactured issue.’” It also observed that local law enforcement officials around the country “warned of ‘misapplied’ federal law-enforcement priorities, and local officials generally opposed federal intervention at local school board meetings.”

The subcommittee report concluded that the DOJ failed to perform “any due diligence prior to the issuance of the Attorney General’s memorandum.” If the department had done this, the report asserts, “it would have understood clearly and forcefully that federal intervention was unwarranted.” As a result, the report noted, “parents around the country had FBI ‘assessments’ opened into them.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill like Congressman Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) are conveying relief at the prospect Garland’s potential exit in 2025.

“I think this demonstrates to people across our country how fortunate we are that Merrick Garland is not sitting on the Supreme Court bench right now, because that was what was proposed under the Obama administration,” he observed on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Wednesday. “And then he would be making these decisions for life right now. As problematic as this is, at least we can assume that as soon as the Biden administration term has ended, that Merrick Garland’s term also will end.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, expressed alarm at the report’s findings while also encouraging resolve on the part of parents.

“This report confirms all our worst suspicions,” she told The Washington Stand. “The degree to which the government has been used to attack parents at the behest of education bureaucrats who are supposed to serve children and families cannot be overstated. Parents knew this by instinct — that the powerful were working together to advance their own interests instead of working for the good of children and families. And they have no problem exercising Gestapo-like tactics on parents, while advancing progressive policies inside schools that amount to lawless chaos for children and teachers.”

“Christians must engage — we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by these tactics,” Kilgannon concluded.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden, DOJ Worked Together to Brand Parents as Terrorists

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Justice Department Prosecutors Respond To Tucker Carlson’s Capitol Riot Footage

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Federal prosecutors responded to Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson’s newly released Capitol riot footage in a court filing Sunday.

Prosecutors rejected Carlson’s argument about the Justice Department (DOJ) withholding evidence from defendants and accused him of cherry-picking footage of “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.

“In fact, the videos of Chansley’s movements throughout his time in the Capitol are highly inculpatory of Pezzola, Chansley, and other rioters captured on them. Pezzola’s argument seems to be that the snippets of Chansley’s movements that were televised by Carlson establish that there was no emergency necessitating the suspension of proceedings,” prosecutors argued in the court filing.

“The televised footage lacks the context of what occurred before and after the footage. Chansley entered the building as part of a violent crowd that gained access as a result of Pezzola’s destruction of a window and he traveled with Pezzola during the initial breach.”

The filing was connected to Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola’s motion to dismiss the government’s seditious conspiracy case against him based on Carlson’s footage of Chansley. He argued the DOJ was monitoring his communications, destroyed evidence and fabricated evidence involving confidential human sources.

“The televised footage shows Chansley’s movements only from approximately 2:56 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Prior to that time, Chansley had, amongst other acts, breached a police line at 2:09 p.m. with the mob, entered the Capitol less than one minute behind Pezzola during the initial breach of the building, and faced off with members of the U.S. Capitol Police for more than thirty minutes in front of the Senate Chamber doors while elected officials, including the Vice President of the United States, were fleeing from the chamber,” prosecutors continued.

Carlson’s footage appeared to show Capitol Police officers escorting Chansley through the Capitol building. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger on Tuesday accused Carlson of airing selective footage and coming to “misleading conclusions.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, led the criticism of Carlson for airing the footage and his commentary about the Capitol riot. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Carlson with the footage and defended his decision to do so Wednesday.

Chansley’s former defense attorney Albert Watkins told the Daily Caller on Thursday that he is calling for the Justice Department to publicly state it failed to provide Chansley with all of the footage during his prosecution. He told various outlets he did not receive the footage of his client aired by Carlson.

Prosecutors rejected accusations of withholding footage taken by the Capitol Police’s surveillance system (CCTV) in the filing. “First, all the footage of Jacob Chansley that aired on Tucker Carlson earlier this week has been produced to these defendants in discovery,” the prosecutors said.

“While discovery in this case is voluminous, the government has provided defense counsel with the necessary tools to readily identify relevant cameras within the CCTV to determine whether footage was produced or not. Accordingly, the volume of discovery does not excuse defense counsel from making reasonable efforts to ascertain whether an item has been produced before making representations about what was and was not produced, let alone before filing inaccurate and inflammatory allegations of discovery failures,” they added.

Chansley was sentenced in November to 41 months in prison followed by 36 months of supervised release for his role in the Capitol riot. His charges included disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

Pezzola’s charges include seditious conspiracy; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; obstruction of an official proceeding; destruction of government property and aiding and abetting; and robbery of personal property of the United States, according to a superseding indictment. He allegedly used a stolen riot shield to smash windows of the Capitol building and threatened to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Pezzola is on trial with four other high-ranking members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group known for violent demonstrations.

“Our team’s review of available surveillance footage of Mr. Chansley is consistent with our reporting,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight” senior executive producer Justin Wells said in a statement to the Daily Caller.

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Reporter.

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Biden ‘Abandons Pregnant Mothers to Suffer Alone’ from Abortion Pills: 75 Members of Congress

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A flurry of legislation, executive orders, and lawsuits have volleyed back and forth between the Biden administration, which seeks to protect the abortion industry, and pro-life advocates attempting to protect unborn children and their mothers. As the Biden administration expanded the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs, 75 pro-life lawmakers have demanded the FDA take pills off the market altogether. As Biden’s executive actions tout expanding the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs as “essential to our [n]ation’s health,” litigators have threatened to take abortionists to state court and issued fresh warnings to corporations thinking of trafficking in life-ending drugs.

“We call on the FDA to remove mifepristone from the market, or, at minimum, promptly restore and further strengthen the initial basic health and safety requirements for abortion drugs, and cease permitting the mailing and shipping of abortion drugs in violation of [f]ederal criminal law,” wrote 75 members of Congress to the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Robert Califf. The Biden administration’s new standard “abandons pregnant mothers to suffer alone, without proper medical evaluation or oversight, potentially life-threatening complications, which can include severe bleeding, infection, potential surgical intervention, and even death.”

It also “makes it easier for these drugs to fall into the hands of human traffickers or abusers, who may administer the drugs to pregnant mothers without their knowledge or consent,” wrote the coalition — 23 Senators and 52 U.S. representatives, led by Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) — last Thursday. Ironically, by insisting abortion companies can mail abortion pills, “the FDA is, astonishingly, conditioning certification for pharmacies on their willingness to violate [f]ederal criminal law.”

This letter comes after 41 members of Congress chided Attorney General Merrick Garland that the Justice Department has “abdicated its Constitutional responsibility to enforce the law,” specifically the Comstock Act, which forbids mailing abortion-inducing drugs.

Shorn of their majority in the House of Representatives, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have increasingly advanced abortion-on-demand through a combination of executive action and bureaucratic inaction. “Members of our cabinet and our administration are now directed, as of the president’s order, to identify barriers to access” to pills that induce the death of unborn children “and to recommend actions” to facilitate their distribution nationwide, Harris told a crowd of abortionists and lobbyists in Tallahassee last Sunday, on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Biden’s memo directed AG Garland, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra, and Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas to pursue “further efforts to protect access to” abortion. Biden also directed the Attorney General and the DHS secretary of Homeland Security “to consider actions … that would protect the safety and security of patients, providers, and third parties, and that would protect the security of pharmacies and other entities providing, dispensing, or delivering” abortion pills. “Defending and protecting [abortion] is essential to our [n]ation’s health, safety, and progress,” Biden wrote, before describing pro-life laws as “threats to the liberty” of Americans.

Congressional Republicans more closely reflect the public sentiment on abortion pills. Nearly all young voters — 91% of Gen Z and Gen Y registered voters — support requiring an abortionist to administer an ultrasound to protect mothers from ectopic pregnancies; 93% say abortionists should test women’s blood (RH) to protect women from future infertility; and 60% say the pills should be given in person to avoid them from falling into the hands of an abuser, according to a poll released this month by Students for Life of America. A previous KofC/Marist poll found that 63% of Americans oppose sending abortion-inducing pills through the mail.

“The Biden administration is trying to establish the FDA as the new Supreme Court with their regulations as the new Roe v. Wade. This abuse of power is not only an attack on states’ rights but is also an attack on common decency,” said Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins. “Rest assured that 50 years after Roe v. Wade, pro-life Americans will not have the flawed and inhuman judgment of seven men replaced by the highly discredited Joe Biden.”

Biden notwithstanding, the FDA is an inauspicious vehicle to impose sweeping federal regulations. Nearly all (98%) of the rules issued by the FDA between 2001 and 2017 were unconstitutional, according to a report from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Rather than rely on the White House to curb its own abuses, pro-life legislators and litigators at the state and federal levels have proposed laws and lawsuits to protect life from executive overreach.

On January 20, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) introduced the Teleabortion Prevention Act of 2023, which would require abortionists to perform an in-person examination of the mother before prescribing abortion-inducing drugs, be present when she ingests them, and schedule a follow-up visit to treat any complications.

“The abortion industry continues to exploit vulnerable women through the use of chemical abortions for profit, and they are dishonest about the impact of chemical abortion on women’s health. For years they have worked to remove key health and safety protocols that require an abortionist to physically examine the mother before administering these dangerous drugs,” said Connor Semelsberger, director of Federal Affairs at Family Research Council. “Thank you to Representative Good for standing up to protect both vulnerable women and their unborn children.”

Similarly, Reps. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) and Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill to rescind the FDA’s loosening of women’s health protections on the distribution of abortion-inducing pills and prevent the agency from reverting to the lower standards in the future. This legislation “to nullify the final FDA rule that expands distribution of these drugs through telehealth and mail is urgently needed to save the lives of babies and their mothers,” said Kris Ullman, president of Eagle Forum.

Semelsberger agreed, “Despite what the Biden administration may claim, there is mounting evidence of just how dangerous do-it-yourself chemical abortions are to both unborn children and their mothers. The latest action by the FDA to put pharmacies on the front lines of distributing abortion pills — without any real concern for how this move will impact maternal health — shows just how politicized the FDA has become.”

“Thanks to pro-life leaders like Representatives Hern and Harshbarger, there is hope that this Congress will take back its role in providing oversight to the FDA and restore true health and safety measures for all Americans, including the unborn,” he concluded.

The Protect the UNBORN (Undo the Negligent Biden Orders Right Now) Act, introduced by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), would prevent the federal government from enforcing Biden’s abortion-expanding Executive Orders 14079 and 14076.

Aside from the federal government, 29 states place commonsense regulations on chemical abortion, which has a higher rate of dangerous interactions than surgical abortion; 18 require the abortionist to be present when the woman takes the pills. And the top lawyers in nearly half the country have promised additional action to protect the unborn from the Biden administration’s abortion pill regimen.

“The authority to regulate abortion lies with the people and their elected representatives. In our states, we prioritize the health and safety of women and children and our laws reflect this,” wrote the attorneys general of 22 states to FDA Commissioner Califf on January 13. “Our [s]tates will not yield to the [a]dministration’s radical pro-abortion policies.”

Wyoming State Senator Tim Salazar (R-Riverton) introduced SF 109, which would protect unborn children in the state from abortion pills. While the bill would not punish the mother, anyone who manufactures or dispenses abortion pills would face a $9,000 fine and up to six months in prison. If passed, the law would take effect July 1.

Finally, some have appealed to the private sector to follow its conscience — or its financial self-interest — by refusing to stock abortion-inducing drugs. FRC joined more than a dozen other national groups in signing letters asking Rite Aid and Walmart not to distribute abortion-inducing pills in their pharmacies. “We are grateful that, so far, Walmart Inc. has not followed the path of CVS and Walgreens in becoming, in effect, an abortion facility,” said Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council. “Pharmacies across the country should recognize that distributing these drugs is antithetical to their mission of providing medications that allow life to flourish.”

As of this writing, 53,218 people have signed FRC’s petition asking Walgreens and CVS, “Do Not Turn Your Pharmacies into Abortion Businesses!”

AUTHOR
Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.