It is pretty clear that the FBI and Department of Justice do not give a darn about protestations that the bureau has become politicized, otherwise it never would have treated pro-lifer Mark Houck as it did last Friday.
Dedicated public servants at the highest levels who care about the FBI’s reputation and institutional trust would likely work to alleviate concerns about alleged law enforcement corruption. Instead, it appears that the Biden administration is ramping up its crackdown on right-leaning activists whom they deem to be threats, regardless of precedent and the facts.
The real question is, what is the Republican Party going to do about it?
According to leading GOP senators, more than 20 whistleblowers have come forward in recent weeks alleging varying degrees of political bias in the FBI against conservatives. At the same time, Biden and his team have been warning about Republican extremists and saying that pro-life Americans threaten democracy.
All of that, coupled with the FBI’s raid on former President Donald J. Trump, have many Americans fearful that Biden and his cronies at the DOJ are targeting right-leaning Americans to make an example out of them.
This is especially true in the aforementioned case of Houck, a Catholic father of seven who has worked on behalf of unborn and helpless mothers for the past twenty years.
On Friday, he was greeted by his government with more than 20 armed agents barging into his home as his children watched in terror, according to his wife. Houck was arrested and is being accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) act in October of last year outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic.
The specifics of his alleged crime?
The founder of The King’s Men, a group working toward ending pornography and abortion, shoved a 72-year-old creep well beyond the entrance of the clinic who was making vulgar statements to his pre-teen son, per statements made on his behalf.
The man in question attempted to sue Houck, but that case was dismissed by a federal court. According to the Catholic News Agency, the alleged victim did not even show up for the case’s hearing.
In turn, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s FBI decided that the case was so egregious that Houck simply had to be handled with armed agents.
For his part, Houck’s attorney, Peter Breen from the Thomas More Society, said that Houck voluntarily offered to chat with authorities several months ago. The Feds rejected that act of good faith and instead arrested him in a show of force.
According to U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero, the FBI is committed to stopping assaults and Houck must be stopped.
“Assault is always a serious offense, and under the FACE Act, if the victim is targeted because of their association with a reproductive healthcare clinic, it is a federal crime,” Romero said. “Our office and the Department of Justice are committed to prosecuting crimes which threaten the safety and rights of all individuals.”
Whistleblowers with the DOJ would likely disagree with that assessment and claim instead that the DOJ is focused on diverting resources to crack down on January 6 offenders and conjuring up cases of white supremacy and right-wing extremism to meet certain metrics.
“This case is being brought solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-life Americans,” Breen said in a statement.
“Mark Houck is innocent of these lawless charges, and we intend to prove that in court,” he added.
Breen also asserts that based on a prior court victory won by the Thomas More Society, a one-off altercation cannot be considered a violation of the FACE act.
In short, the FBI chose to send armed agents to the home of a father of seven, with zero prior incidents, even after he was willing to cooperate with authorities. Based on common sense and the fact that the Biden administration has worked to make abortion the number one issue of the upcoming midterms, it isn’t a conspiracy to wonder whether or not the FBI really has been politicized.
Through that lens, the FBI has to prove to the American people that it has not been tainted with impropriety.
Since it looks like they have zero desire in doing that, Republicans — should they ever regain power in Congress — must find their backbone and implement reforms, fire those responsible for leading the FBI away from truth and justice, and work to ensure that the institution can be trusted.
Until that happens, cases like Houck’s only serve as evidence that the DOJ is enacting totalitarian edicts hellbent on arresting conservatives in order to silence political opposition.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.