On Oct. 27, Attorney General Merrick Garland sat before Congress and claimed the FBI would not be flagging parents protesting at local sch...
On Oct. 27, Attorney General Merrick Garland sat before Congress and claimed the FBI would not be flagging parents protesting at local school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists.
Whistleblower documents released on Tuesday, however, suggest this may have been an outright lie.
The documents, sent to House Republicans by an anonymous FBI staffer, show that the FBI’s counterterrorism and criminal investigative divisions were tracking threats against teachers by flagging certain instances with “threat tags.”
Questions over whether or not the FBI was improperly investigating parent protesters first arose after Garland sent an Oct. 4 memo to the FBI directing the agency to track “threats” against public school officials. This memo came shortly after the National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Joe Biden demanding he treat “the growing number of threats” against school board members as acts of domestic terrorism.
Garland claimed during his Oct. 27 testimony that his memorandum did not rely upon the NSBA’s letter. However, according to Fox News, recently released internal emails show that both the White House and the Department of Justice coordinated with the NSBA prior to the release of Garland’s memo.
Following its release, Republicans quickly became concerned over Garland’s order, given that the attorney general had no examples to point to as credible “threats” against school officials. This led many to believe the target of these orders was actually the growing number of parents protesting against critical race theory, masking policies and other left-wing policies spreading throughout the American school system.
Concerns that such “threats” were being overly exaggerated seemed to be confirmed by the NSBA itself on Oct. 22 when the group apologized for its letter, saying “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”
According to CNN, Garland dismissed accusations that his order would be used to target parents, claiming the directive he gave the FBI was merely meant to respond “to concerns about violence, threats of violence, other criminal conduct.”
“That’s all it’s about, and all it asks, is for federal law enforcement to consult with, meet with local law enforcement to assess the circumstances, strategize about what may or may not be necessary to provide federal assistance, if it is necessary,” Garland told Congress.
Given the leaked documents, these claims appear to be outright false.
The documents show that the FBI set up an investigative process to track potential threats against school board members and teachers by assessing “threat tags.” Whether or not these “threat tags” are being or have been applied to protesting parents remains unclear.
According to one of the leaked documents, threat tags are to be used in all “investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
In a statement provided to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI maintained it “has never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings, and we are not going to start now.”
In a letter addressed to Garland, House Republicans are demanding the attorney general provide answers regarding the whistleblower documents and his Oct. 27 testimony.
“We are now in receipt of a protected disclosure from a Department whistleblower showing that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific ‘threat tag’ to track potential investigations,” House representatives said in the letter.
“This new information calls into question the accuracy and completeness of your sworn testimony.”
“This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents.”
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