Merrick Garland Must Go

A new memo shows that Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress about the FBI snooping on parent groups upset with local school boards for their use of Critical Race Theory in the classroom. If so, it doesn’t warrant a slap on the hand, but swift removal from office.

Presidents deserve to have the people they nominate serve their entire term. But that’s not the case when that person lies under oath to Congress and, by extension, the American people. That’s a criminal offense.

This allegation comes from an official letter sent to the Justice Department by Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee, in response to an email from a whistleblower.

If you’ll recall, on Oct. 21, Garland appeared before Congress and said he couldn’t “imagine any circumstances in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children, nor … a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorists.”  

He went on to say, “I do not think that parents getting angry at school boards for whatever reason constitute domestic terrorism. It’s not even a close question.”

The only problem is, neither statement is true.

Garland in fact proposed using the FBI to investigate parents indignant over schools subjecting their children to the Marxist, anti-American ideological propaganda of Critical Race Theory. For all we know, he’s still doing it.

What prompted such a move? It came in response to a Sept. 29 letter sent to President Joe Biden by National School Board Association (NSBA) President Viola Garcia. In it, Garcia calls parents who dare to speak out on CRT and other educational travesties, such as forcing kids to wear masks, an “immediate threat” to educators that’s “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

“Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials,” Garcia wrote.

Evidence? Garcia doesn’t present any. Even so, Biden apparently was so impressed that on Oct. 13 he named Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, the organization that overseas what students will be tested on for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called “the Nation’s Report Card.”

We wonder: Will CRT be on that board’s agenda, too?

In any case, Garland got the message early on, likely directly from Biden’s office: Do something about these troublesome parents.

So on Oct. 4, Garland kicked both the FBI and U.S. attorneys into gear, telling them to meet with “federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial leaders” on “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

The public response was swift. Parents of school-age kids expressed outrage. And, as of last week, some 26 state school boards had distanced themselves from Garcia’s letter and 11 had quit the NSBA entirely. The NSBA’s own board retracted and repudiated its letter to Biden.

Now, comes Tuesday’s release of the unnamed whistleblower’s internal email that shows, despite Garland’s denials, “FBI counterterrorism officials are compiling and tracking investigations into so-called ‘threats’ against school boards and other school officials,” as PJ Media noted.

That email, sent just a day before Garland testified before Congress, was written on behalf of the assistant directors of the FBI’s counterterrorism and divisions, and circulated by someone at agency’s criminal investigative division.

It includes the following:

We share an obligation to ensure all individuals are able to do their jobs without threats of violence or fear for their safety. This can only be accomplished with effective coordination and engagement with our law enforcement partners and United States attorney offices.

As a result, the Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats. We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff. The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels.

A “threat tag?”

In short, if you’re a parent of a school-age child upset at the false history and divisive racism being taught in our nation’s schools, Big Brother is watching you. For daring to buck the hateful leftist dogma of Critical Race Theory that’s being used to tear our country apart, you can now be called a domestic terrorist.

You might think you’re merely exercising your rights to free speech and to direct your child’s education, but our minders in the new Ministry of Truth, excuse us, the Justice Department, have other ideas.

And Garland lied about it.

Of course, Garland denies this, despite ample and incontrovertible evidence that he perjured himself before Congress and intentionally misrepresented to the American people the Biden administration’s anti-terror war on parents. As far as we can tell, the policy has not been officially rescinded.

Lying to Congress is bad enough. But treating average Americans as terrorists for simply exercising their constitutionally protected rights to free speech is beyond the pale. It’s an egregious breach of public trust, as well as a violation of the law.

It’s a good thing, as Sen. Tom Cotton recently said, that Garland never made it onto the Supreme Court. We agree. Too bad the same can’t be said for his post as attorney general – another major mistake by Biden, and one that can be remedied only by firing Garland or asking for his resignation.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board