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The Biden administration directed the FBI to investigate parents who spoke out at school board meetings against vaccine and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic for possible “domestic terrorism,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report released Monday.
The report, by the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, focused on an October 2021 memorandum from then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI director and key federal prosecutors, calling for a federal response to “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school officials.
The memo said Garland’s office would use its “authority and resources” to “discourage these threats” and pursue federal charges against parents.
According to the DOJ, Garland issued the directive “despite being presented with very little evidence of actual violence or violent threats against school administrators and at school board meetings.”
The report described Garland’s actions as an attempt to “interfere with parental rights and speech.”
“To many Americans, Attorney General Garland’s memo embodied the misuse and weaponization of government power,” the DOJ stated.
According to the report, Garland sent the memo only five days after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) urged then-President Joe Biden to take action against parents, writing in a September 2021 letter: “Classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
A month later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a threat assessment targeting parents who opposed school mandates:
“Violent individuals who oppose mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and CRT [critical race theory] as a topic of classroom learning, will increasingly pose a threat to school personnel over the next six months due to the expected approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5-11, continued misinformation and disinformation related to CRT curriculum, and upcoming school board elections.”
Garland’s memo led to the establishment of a federal task force to investigate parents and resulted in the FBI opening 25 “Guardian assessments” — preliminary reviews of whether someone may pose a criminal or terrorism-related threat — against parents, the DOJ said.
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said the DOJ report is “a grim reminder of just how close the COVID-19 era came to becoming a full police state that abolished what remains of parental control.”
Some federal officials pushed back against plan to investigate parents
According to the DOJ, several investigators from the DOJ and FBI pushed back against the Biden administration’s requests.
Some officials raised concerns that prosecuting parents for speaking up at school board meetings would be “challenging from a First Amendment perspective,” according to the report.
An FBI official who reviewed the DHS assessment said the agency should “not coordinate on this or provide any comments back” because he viewed it as a “politically charged paper.”
The NSBA also walked back its call to investigate parents. “Within weeks, and amid substantial public backlash, the NSBA’s Board of Directors apologized ‘for the letter,’ and acknowledged there ‘was no justification for some of the language included in’ it,” the report states.
Yet “despite internal pushback,” Garland issued the memo, and DHS pushed ahead with its threat assessment, “influenced by White House officials,” the DOJ stated in its press release about the report.
The DHS assessment referenced incidents where “violent threats were posted on social media” and “threatening letters” were sent to school boards and their members in communities across the U.S., citing “reliable NGO reporting” — referring to nongovernmental organizations.
The “reliable NGO reporting” cited by the DHS also referenced “calls on social media for individuals to join local militias and start a civil war to fight against the alleged ‘poison’ vaccine and protect children from being vaccinated.”
According to a June 2023 U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee report and revelations released that year as part of the “Twitter Files,” CISA — an agency housed within DHS — worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis- or malinformation related to COVID-19.
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Trump taking steps to secure ‘parental and First Amendment rights’
According to the DOJ, the Trump administration is taking several steps to secure “parental and First Amendment rights” in light of the department’s findings, including:
- Offering parents for whom the FBI prepared “Guardian assessments” an opportunity to review those reports.
- The addition of a disclaimer to those reports noting that they raise “serious constitutional concerns.”
- A review of the files of anyone investigated under the Garland memo “to determine if their constitutional rights were violated.”
- Funding for school officials and teachers for resources and training “about the First Amendment rights of parents and the rights of parents to direct and guide the upbringing and education of their children.”
- A $1.5 million award to the National Association of School Resource Officers to “increase the organization’s capacity to inform school employees regarding the rights of parents in our primary and secondary educational system.”
- A joint letter, authored by the DOJ and the U.S. Department of Education, “to all 50 state attorneys general on parental rights.”
The DOJ’s investigation stems from a February 2025 directive by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to review Garland’s memo.
The directive was issued under the authority of a January 2025 executive order by President Donald Trump for ending the political weaponization of federal agencies.
A 2024 House report on the weaponization of the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic cited the Biden administration’s attempts to investigate parents who opposed school mandates. The report called those efforts an example of a “two-tiered system of government.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Calling it a ‘Necessary First Step to Stop Weaponization of the Federal Government,’ House Issues 17,000-page Report
- ‘The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine’: Stanford University Project Colluded With Feds, Social Media to Censor ‘Misinformation’
- Religious Liberty and Free Speech ‘Stand or Fall Together,’ Warns Doctor Fired Over Vaccine Mandate
- ‘Demonized and Ostracized’: Worker Fired Over COVID Shot Testifies Before Religious Freedom Commission
- DOJ Backs Children’s Health Defense in Antitrust Suit Against Big Media
