A whistleblower Tuesday revealed to the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI deployed “counterterrorism tools” to target concerned parents participating in local school board meetings.
“These new whistleblower documents provided to the House Judiciary Committee prove that the FBI was, in fact, using counterterrorism tools to investigate concerned parents who have attended school board meetings,” Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neily said of the revelation, continuing that it “directly contradicts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s sworn Congressional testimony.”
A letter from House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to Attorney General Merrick Garland states that “lawmakers have received documents from a whistleblower that state the FBI is using counterterrorism tactics to investigate parents considered to be potential ‘domestic terrorists’ as they voice concerns about education in their local school districts,” as Breitbart News reported.
According to the whistleblower, “the Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats.”
Jordan’s letter continued, saying:
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. This new information calls into question the accuracy and completeness of your sworn testimony.
“Not only has America’s education bureaucracy declared war on parents concerned about local schools – but so has the Department of Justice, which has weaponized the FBI against parents to chill their speech,” Neily continued. “While it remains to be seen whether Attorney General Garland’s Congressional testimony was incomplete or dishonest, the credibility of a storied federal agency has been thrown into question.”
The House Judiciary Republicans also said it was “terrifying” that the FBI is “spying on parents.” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) added that the basis for spying was a letter from the National School Boards Association that the “Biden @WhiteHouse helped write.”
As Breitbart News’s Dr. Susan Berry reported, “Emails obtained as well in October through public records requests by Parents Defending Education (PDE) revealed Garcia and Slaven had been ‘in talks over the last several weeks with White House staff,’ and ‘they requested additional information on some of the specific threats.'”
Continuing, Berry said, “Garcia wrote to NSBA directors the organization ‘has been engaged with the White House and the Department of Education on these and other issues related to the pandemic for several weeks now.'”
“At best, if we assume that you were ignorant of the FBI’s actions in response to your October 4 memorandum at the time of your testimony, this new evidence suggests that your testimony to the Committee was incomplete and requires additional explanation,” Jordan’s letter said of Garland, continuing, “If, however, you were aware of the FBI’s actions at the time of your testimony, this evidence shows that you willfully misled the Committee about the nature and extent of the Department’s use of federal counterterrorism tools to target concerned parents at school board meetings.”
“The American people deserve a full accounting of exactly who was involved, and when – so that egregious overreach like this may be prevented in the future,” Neily concluded.