FBI Used Terrorism Laws to Investigate ‘Dozens’ of ‘Concerned Parents’ Who Attended School Board Meetings

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FBI Used Terrorism Laws to Investigate ‘Dozens’ of ‘Concerned Parents’ Who Attended School Board Meetings

By Victoria Taft, PJ Media, May 12, 2022:

If whistleblowers are telling GOP members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee the truth, Attorney General Merrick Garland was lying to Congress when he denied parents were being targeted with counterterrorism investigations for the “crime” of getting angry at school board meetings.

On Oct. 21, 2021, Garland told a Congressional hearing, “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children, nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”

But whistleblowers told GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee that that’s exactly what Garland did. Indeed, the witnesses say, “dozens” of people were investigated using the Patriot Act counterterrorism tools at the FBI’s disposal.

Ultimately, charges weren’t pursued, note the GOP senators in a letter they sent to Attorney General Garland on Wednesday. But the FBI subjected “these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them, the establishment of an FBI case file that includes their political views, and the application of a ‘threat tag’ to their names as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children.”

The targeted parents had generally spoken out against school COVID-19 mandates for vaccines and masks. As the letter to Garland put it, the FBI used “counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity.”

Each of the parents, who were “found in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings,” was identified with the “EDUOFFICIALS,” threat tag, the lawmakers wrote. “The information we have received shows how, as a direct result of your directive, federal law enforcement is using counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity,” they said. The letter was signed by Reps. Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the committee, and Mike Johnson, the ranking member of the subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties.

Read the rest here.….