A new report by the DOJ’s ‘Weaponization Working Group’ reveals that several officials pushed back on politicized White House guidance.
A new report released by the Department of Justice’s “Weaponization Working Group” details how Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum instructing federal law enforcement to investigate the parents of schoolchildren was drafted in response to a pressure campaign from White House officials, despite internal disagreement on whether such an undertaking was appropriate.
The report, titled “The 2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools,” traces correspondence between officials in the White House and the Department of Justice discussing federal options to respond to a September 29, 2021, letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA). The letter warned that public school teachers and administrators were “under an immediate threat” from parents who protested stringent Covid-19 masking and vaccination requirements and critical race theory in public school curricula, comparing those parents to domestic terrorists.
The letter advised President Biden to “examine appropriate enforceable actions” against “violent” school board meeting attendees, including, but not limited to, the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 national security law passed to thwart collaboration between American citizens and foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.
The letter also referred to an incident at a Loudoun County School Board meeting in which Scott Smith, father of a disabled daughter who was raped at school by a transgender man dressed as a woman in the women’s restroom, was arrested after challenging the school board chair’s claim that “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms” and “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
Upon receiving the letter, the White House asked attorneys in the deputy attorney general’s office “to see if you have any ideas” about how to address the NSBA’s concerns, according to the working group’s report. Numerous officials threw cold water on the idea that the Justice Department could pursue action in these hyper-local incidents, with one DOJ official calling it “ridiculous.”
Kevin Chambers, the associate deputy attorney general, considered the potential criminal conduct outlined by the NSBA “as state/local in character,” according to the report. On October 3, 2021 — two days before the memorandum — an attorney in the civil rights division said that a “vast, vast majority” of the conduct did not implicate federal law and was likely to be determined to be protected speech. Even for conduct that resulted in trespassing or disturbing the peace, it would involve “nothing remotely federal.” Another official said: “It seems that we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently non-federal conduct.”
Garland’s memorandum — addressed to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division, and all 94 U.S. attorneys — raised alarm over “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against local school board members and education officials.
“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” Garland wrote in the one-page memorandum — omitting any examples of “threats of violence” toward officials.
The memorandum called for the FBI and every U.S. attorney’s office across the country to “convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district” to discuss “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
The working group’s report found that officials from the Biden White House exerted pressure on DOJ officials to open a probe or stand up a task force, even when some Justice Department officials were hesitant.
“Officials in the Department of Justice, including both career officials and Biden Administration political appointees, initially pushed back on doing so, including by questioning the constitutionality of the request,” the report finds.
“They might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force,” one DOJ attorney said of a potential task force. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” another attorney said three days before Garland sent the memorandum.
The report chalks up the memorandum to a “product of political pressure from outside groups and White House officials in the Biden Administration who pushed Department of Justice leadership to inappropriately weaponize the Department of Justice and to chill the constitutional rights of parents.”
Just weeks after the NSBA’s letter labeled parents as “domestic terrorists,” the organization apologized, acknowledging “no justification for some of the language included in” it. The organization has since scrubbed the letter from its website.
The report concludes by announcing the Justice Department’s intention to provide redress for individuals who may have had their constitutional rights violated as a result of the Garland memorandum. In the event of discovering a violation, “the Department will issue a formal apology and institute internal controls as necessary to prevent repeating the violation.”
The Justice Department will also enter a partnership with the National Association of School Resource Officers, pledging $1.5 million for “training and technical assistance” and funding for training teachers and staff about “the First Amendment rights of parents and the rights of parents to direct and guide the upbringing and education of their children.”