The Justice Department under former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland actively sought out a “federal hook” to justify going after parents protesting at school board meetings, internal communications show.
The efforts included workshopping ways within a legal framework to prosecute parents, concerned at the time with mask mandates, critical race theory teachings in K-12 classrooms, and transgender school policies.
In an email on Oct. 1, 2021, Tamarra Matthews-Johnson, who served as Garland’s counsel in the Office of the Attorney General, forwarded press clips to Kevin Chambers of the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, writing, “Just checking that you were aware,” in reference to the NSBA letter.
“We’re aware; the challenge here is finding a federal hook,” Chambers replied around a half hour later. “But WH has been in touch about whether we can assist in some form or fashion.”
That Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021, the morning following the “federal hook” email, then-deputy associate U.S. attorney general Sparkle Sooknanan, now a Biden-appointed federal judge, contacted a team of attorneys in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division requesting an over-the-weekend turnaround to identify “any authorities CRT enforces that could help address the issue.”
“You might have seen this letter to the President and accompanying reporting on threats against school board members. The Department may need to say something publicly today about its response to these threat, so unfortunately this is a quick-turn request,” Sooknanan said.
Sooknanan looped in Robert Moossy and Pamela Karlan, both top attorneys in the department’s Civil Rights Division, “in the event this might be actionable.”
Karland initially advised that the instances cited by the NSBA “likely fall outside of our jurisdiction.” After back-and-forth all day between parties, Karlan told Sooknanan, “I think this is the end of the line.” To which, Sooknanan said, “Thanks very much, Pam. I’ll pass this on.”
On Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, one day prior to the publication of Garland’s memo, a career attorney in the Civil Rights Division expressed concerns directly to Moossy after examining the NSBA letter, citing a lack of statutory authority or legal basis to target otherwise First Amendment-protected speech.
“It seems that we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently a non-federal conduct,” the attorney directly told Moossy via email. “It appears to me that the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law. I only saw three stories that involved what sounded like a possible ‘true threat’ and one of those (the Norfolk story) did not appear to be related to masks, etc.”
The attorney noted, “Almost all of the language being used is protected by the First Amendment, the main issue seems to be disruption and obstruction of school board meetings, which could be reached by local trespassing laws or disturbance of the peace laws, but nothing remotely federal.”
“So it seems that we are ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently a non-federal conduct,” the attorney continued.
However, the attorney suggested “something like the FACE Act,” a federal law protecting access to abortion clinics, in order to “criminaliz[e] physical obstruction of schools and school board meetings.”
FBI ORDERED TO RELEASE DOCUMENTS ABOUT BUREAU’S RESPONSE TO NSBA LETTER
America First Legal says these newly uncovered documents “complete the timeline of events” that occurred between the NSBA letter and Garland’s department-wide memo.
In a statement on the legal group’s findings, America First Legal president Gene Hamilton said, “The Biden Administration appears to have engaged in a conspiracy that was ultimately aimed at depriving parents of two fundamental rights—the right to speak, and the right to direct the upbringing of their children.”
