After finding out that the Justice Department official who spearheaded prosecutions against pro-life activists had been fired, one of the defendants imprisoned by the Biden administration over a peaceful protest celebrated and said he would like to attend some “firing parties.”
Calvin Zastrow, 65, who spent 100 days in federal prison for his role in a non-violent protest at an abortion facility in Tennessee, told The Daily Wire he was pleased to hear some of those involved in Biden’s crackdown on pro-lifers had been held accountable. Zastrow’s comments came after the Justice Department released a bombshell report detailing how Biden officials worked closely with pro-abortion groups to monitor, track, and prosecute pro-life activists.
Before the report was released, it was announced that Sanjay Patel, the official who led the prosecutions against the pro-lifers, had been fired.
“I want to come to some firing parties, I think that’s fun to watch. That’d be a good time to celebrate,” Zastrow said. “I’d like to see accountability on the unnamed FBI agents who filed reports on us, and we still don’t know their names, who followed us, who tracked us, who messed with our family.”
Zastrow, a devout Christian who travels the country engaging in evangelism and pro-life events, was convicted in January 2024 of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a Clinton-era statute that makes it a crime to block the entrances of abortion facilities. He and 22 other pro-life activists were pardoned by President Donald Trump his first week in office.
The DOJ report revealed that the Biden administration weaponized the FACE Act by closely working with radical groups like the National Abortion Federation to keep tabs on pro-life activists. Zastrow said he would like to see FACE repealed, saying that “the federal government shouldn’t have this big of a club.”
Emails revealed earlier this month showed abortion groups were tracking Zastrow and were working closely with Patel.
In one email included in the DOJ’s report from September 2021, Patel reached out to the National Abortion Federation to ask if they knew Zastrow’s travel plans. “Do you have any info on Zastrow and Co’s travel to Montana?” Patel wrote.
Zastrow said he wasn’t surprised that pro-abortion groups tracked him and his family, saying that had been going on for years. Yet he did agree with one thing the pro-abortionists said about him and his fellow activists.
“They’re trying to make us to be wild-eyed, religious zealots,” he said. “And that’s because we are wild-eyed, religious zealots for Jesus.”
Paul Vaughn, a Tennessee father who was placed on house arrest after being convicted on the FACE Act, also welcomed the report from the Justice Department.
“We’re thrilled the truth is coming out,” he told The Daily Wire. “We knew that the Biden DOJ was acting inappropriately and maliciously behind the scenes.”
Vaughn’s home was raided by armed FBI agents without warning in 2022 and his young children were outside getting ready for school.
“We had no warning, we had no knowledge that we were even being investigated, let alone charged, until they showed up and arrested me at gunpoint in front of my children,” he said. “It’s just wickedness. It was designed to instill fear in a segment of the population that is pro-life that believes abortion is murder, and it believes it shouldn’t be a part of a civil society.”
In the days leading up to Vaughn’s arrest by the FBI, emails showed that the Justice Department officials discussed the optics of arresting the defendants rather than allowing self-surrender. In one email, Patel wrote that the “unspoken reason” the FBI was going to stage dramatic arrests rather than allow self-surrender was because “the FBI really likes to make arrests.”
Steve Crampton, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society who represented many of the pro-life defendants, praised the Trump administration for its extensive investigation into Biden’s use of the FACE Act.
“It is just extraordinary to me that the Trump DOJ has taken such pains to right the egregious wrongs of the previous administration,” Crampton told The Daily Wire. “I think this is, you know, the word unprecedented is overused these days, but this is unprecedented.”
He said the hundreds of pages of documents included in the report showed that the Biden administration engaged in selective prosecution, discrimination on the basis of religion, and discrimination on the basis of political allegiances.
Part of the Biden administration’s novel strategy against the pro-life defendants was to pair the FACE Act charges with conspiracy against rights, a felony charge that can be punished with over a decade in prison.
One email flagged by Crampton revealed a Justice Department official saying that the conspiracy against rights charge was specifically being used to take away the gun rights of defendants. An official said that prosecutors were “inclined” to bring the conspiracy charge so that the defendants in Detroit would have felonies and would be “barred from possessing firearms.”
Crampton added that the emails revealed the political bias of the Justice Department under Biden.
“It just exposes the ideological underpinnings of the DOJ, and it’s a love affair, really, with the poor abortion movement,” he said. “It just kind of makes my skin crawl to think that these are the folks that are charged with and empowered with the full weight of the federal government to apply the law in an even handed way.”
He said he was grateful to see Patel and three other FACE Act prosecutors cut from the DOJ on Monday.
“It’s astonishing to read and to know that this is the way it ought to be, trying to restore the rule of law is an awfully difficult undertaking after it’s been trampled underfoot by the Biden administration,” Crampton said. “But God bless President Trump and his team for trying to restore some faith in the system.”
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