January 1, FBI Investigates Parents Who Protest Education Policies

Congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, revealing that the FBI has been investigating parents who protest education policies.

Whistleblowers informed the lawmakers about the FBI’s investigations.

“The information we have received shows how, as a direct result of your directive, federal law enforcement is using counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity,” wrote House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA).

In October 2021, Garland directed the FBI and the Department of Justice to form a joint task force to investigate threats against school board members.

Garland’s direction came a week after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to investigate parents protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists under the Patriot Act.

In the letter, the lawmakers cite an FBI case in which agents interviewed someone who had filed a tip alleging that a father who opposed mask mandates in schools “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” and owned guns. The tipster admitted under questioning that “they had ‘no specific information or observations of … any crime threats.'”

“This whistleblower information is startling,” the lawmakers wrote. “Although FBI agents ultimately—and rightly—determined that these cases did not implicate federal criminal statutes, the agents still exerted their limited time and resources investigating these complaints. This valuable law-enforcement time could have been expended on real and pressing threats.”

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FBI opened multiple investigations into protesting parents, GOP lawmakers say