WASHINGTON—In an explosive report released on Tuesday, the Trump administration revealed the lengths to which the Justice Department went under President Joe Biden’s watch to target religious Americans who opposed abortion.
The Trump Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group reviewed over 700,000 internal records, The Daily Wire has learned, which they distilled into an 800-page report. The document, which details the Biden administration’s weaponization of federal law to target peaceful pro-life activists, also outlines how the Trump administration plans to correct the previous administration’s wrongs.
“This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on Tuesday morning. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.”
At the center of the Biden administration’s efforts is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law meant to protect access to pro-abortion and pro-life facilities alike. The Biden administration infamously used the FACE Act to prosecute and imprison peaceful pro-life protesters. And Tuesday’s report found that “Biden DOJ senior leadership” and members of the Reproductive Health Care Providers Task Force “provided extensive support to abortion clinics” and “ignored and downplayed vandalism and attacks against pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship.”
The DOJ report describes how the Biden-era “Reproductive Health Care Providers Task Force” was in constant contact with pro-abortion groups and the clinics they represented while disregarding pro-life groups. As The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported, one Justice Department official often texted an abortion activist and worked to track the travel plans of Christian pro-life activists who had not been charged with any crimes. The emails also show how pro-abortion groups provided dossiers to the Biden DOJ with pictures and information — which was later used by the FBI to make arrests.
Meanwhile, the Task Force attorneys didn’t communicate with any pro-life pregnancy centers until September 2022 — months after the massive spike in violence against pregnancy centers related to the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. Vandals would firebomb, attack, vandalize, or spray-paint the buildings with messages like “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.”
When the Biden Justice Department did address the attacks on pregnancy centers, they merely identified possible contacts “via a quick Google search and directed Task Force leadership to schedule meetings.”
“The Task Force then had several meetings with the pro-life groups identified through that initial outreach and periodically sent them press releases,” the report states. “However, internally, CRT attorneys questioned whether to provide pregnancy resource centers with the same resources as abortion clinics, questioning whether these facilities fall under the FACE Act’s scope.”
Biden DOJ prosecutors were also engaging in inappropriate conduct, the report found. The prosecutors “knowingly withheld evidence that defense counsel requested to prepare an affirmative defense” and lied about not having that information available.
For example, in United States v. Gallagher, the defense counsel asked for historical data on FACE Act prosecutions, but the DOJ Task Force Director declined that data, saying he didn’t keep those records and that the DOJ wouldn’t provide them.
“Notably,” the report says, “he had this information readily available and decided not to share it with the defendants, despite sharing substantially identical information with NAF.”
Video of the FBI’s arrest of Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee. DOJ charged him with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations” for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul tells me the footage was taken by his wife. pic.twitter.com/KSDvLRSrlF
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 7, 2022
The Biden prosecutors also tried to screen jurors based on their religious beliefs, according to the report: in United States v. Zastrow in the Eastern District of Michigan, assistant United States attorneys allegedly tried to screen jurors based on whether they were conservative or religious “while not inquiring about liberal counterviews.”
“They referred to Christian pro-life views as ‘culty’ and lambasted the defendants’ beliefs in the courtroom,” the report said.
Notably, those assistant United States attorneys complained that they “ended up with a very Catholic magistrate on duty this week and he was very particular about the bond conditions and not infringing on [defendants’] First Amendment rights.”
The report specifically points to the case of Mark Houck, a Catholic father of a large family whose son was attacked by an abortion clinic worker. The Biden DOJ tried to use the FACE Act to prosecute Houck, but lost the case.
In Houck’s case, “prosecutors considered and declined a request for the defendant to self-surrender.” Apparently determined to make an example of Houck, the DOJ sent “16 FBI agents” to arrest him in front of his crying children.
Photos from the morning the FBI arrested Mark Houck in front of his children. pic.twitter.com/NbLq5bnDQa
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 4, 2022
“When faced with public backlash about the aggressive arrest, the Task Force Director attempted to blame the FBI, rather than address the Biden DOJ’s lack of initial guidance to law enforcement,” the report states. “The jury ultimately found Houck not guilty, and DOJ settled a civil claim to compensate for the Biden DOJ’s misconduct.”
Trump’s Justice Department argues that the Biden DOJ pursued more severe charges, as well as “significantly harsher sentences,” for the peaceful pro-life defendants than the violent pro-abortion defendants, requesting an average sentence of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants compared to the 12.3 months for pro-abortion ones.
“The Biden DOJ pursued significantly higher sentences (near the top range of sentencing guidelines) for pro-life defendants, while pursuing more lenient sentences against the handful of pro-abortion defendants that it charged,” the report reads. “Pro-life defendants were ultimately sentenced to an average of 14 months, while pro-abortion defendants were sentenced to an average of 3 months.”
Meanwhile, as the National Abortion Federation cozied up to the Biden Justice Department, that same department “sought to provide funding to pro-abortion groups,” according to the report.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who was director of the Reproductive Health Care Provider Task Force, served as a reference for the National Abortion Federation’s application for a “large, private grant.”
“We found no record of ethics approval for a DOJ attorney to take an interest in the financial outcome of a party having business before the Biden DOJ,” the report says. “Indeed, it is doubtful that the Biden DOJ could validly give any such ethical clearance for this conflict of interest.”
The Trump administration says it is determined to rectify the actions of the Biden Justice Department. Tuesday’s report highlights Trump’s “full and unconditional pardons” of the many pro-life Christians who were targeted in these Biden-era prosecutions.
The Trump Justice Department also dismissed, with prejudice, three Biden-era civil lawsuits against “non-violent pro-life demonstrators and issued a directive that, moving forward, DOJ prosecutors may only bring FACE Act civil actions and prosecutions in extraordinary circumstances or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors.”
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