NBC talking head blanches when Sen. Schmitt rattles off some of the ways the Biden DOJ was weaponized



NBC's Kristen Welker likely regrets trying to paint Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R) into a corner Sunday on "Meet the Press." Rather than make the Republican senator squirm, Welker received an earful about some of the ways that President Joe Biden and other Democrats weaponized the Department of Justice against President-elect Donald Trump and other perceived political opponents.

Schmitt expressed support early in the interview for Trump's second pick to run the Department of Justice, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, noting that she's "smart" and "tough."

"It's a great pick."

Welker insinuated that Trump's proposed attorney general would engage in the same conduct the senator has previously criticized, alluding to Bondi's suggestion last year that elements of the DOJ that waged lawfare against Trump in the lead-up to his re-election will eventually face accountability: "The prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones," and the "investigators will be investigated."

'There has to be accountability for these kinds of abuses.'

The NBC talking head noted that Schmitt previously said the DOJ should go "back to fighting crime and not settling scores," then posed the question, "How do you square those two different views?"

Unwilling to accept the premise that the two views were irreconcilable, Schmitt instead suggested that the reckoning to come isn't more weaponization but rather the return of accountability.

"Everybody's seen this weaponization of the Justice Department over the last four years. It really is a tragedy for a once-respected agency that has gone after Catholics; it's gone after parents who showed up to school board meetings under the auspices of the Patriot Act. This is in the United States of America," said Schmitt.

The senator suggested that Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland "clearly weaponized that department ... to go after their chief political opponent. I'll tell you, Kristen, the arc of that story's really terrifying if you care about the republic."

"After the midterms, Joe Biden said that there was no way President Trump would ever be back in the White House. After that speech, these zombie cases were resurrected. The number three person from DOJ went to New York, and you had the Alvin Bragg case," said Schmitt, referencing Matthew Colangelo's migration from a senior position in the Biden DOJ — acting associate attorney general, then principal deputy associate attorney general — to a supporting role trying to kneecap Trump, this time in New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.

"The number two prosecutor in Atlanta went to the White House and coordinated," continued Schmitt, apparently alluding to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' onetime lover Nathan Wade. Wade, whom Willis made top prosecutor in Trump's Georgia election interference case, admitted to having extensive communications with the Biden White House in an Oct. 15 testimony to Congress.

"You saw all these cases resurrected. They all fell apart under the weight of the law," continued Schmitt. "And so, I do think there needs to be accountability. I think that getting it back to crime-fighting is important, but there has to be accountability for these kinds of abuses."

Welker, who appeared frazzled throughout much of Schmitt's response, pressed the senator to explain what the accountability pursued by the Trump DOJ might look like.

"I think accountability means, first and foremost, the people involved in this should be fired immediately," responded the senator. "Anybody part of this effort to keep President Trump off the ballot and to throw him in jail for the rest of his life because they didn't like his politics and to continue to cast him as a 'threat to democracy' was wrong. And so, we'll see where that goes."

Schmitt reiterated that Bondi is "a smart, capable, tough person," noting she "is going to restore respect in that department."

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Rep. Chip Roy urges colleagues to axe Clinton law used to toss peaceful pro-lifers in prison



Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) is urging his colleagues to vote before year end or in early January on the repeal of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. While Republicans might have enough votes — and will have a trifecta as of January — it is unclear whether they have the requisite will.

"We're after the election now, so I feel like we ought to put it out there this year. Go ahead and vote on it," Roy told the Daily Signal, "so that more Americans can’t get persecuted."

The FACE Act, ratified by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is supposed to protect access to churches and abortion facilities but has been weaponized by the Biden Department of Justice to lock up peaceful pro-life protesters, such as Paulette Harlow, 75; Jean Marshall, 74; Joan Bell, 76; John Hinshaw, 69; Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising director of activism Lauren Handy; and 89-year-old concentration camp survivor Eva Edl.

According to the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, "the DOJ brought at least 26 charges against pro-life individuals under the FACE Act in 2022. What were the total number of charges against abortion activists who obstructed or vandalized pro-life pregnancy centers in the wake of the Dobbs decision that year? Zero."

'Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs.'

The DOJ continued its lopsided application of the law the following year, revealing an institutional commitment to holding pro-lifers to a different standard from their violent counterparts.

The Daily Caller reported in July that from 1994 to 2024, there were 205 cases brought under the FACE Act against pro-life activists and only six brought against abortion activists; 55 of those cases were prosecuted during the Biden administration, only five of which reportedly concerned attacks on pregnancy resource centers.

Months after urging the House Appropriations Committee to bar the use of taxpayer funds for the enforcement of the FACE Act, Rep. Roy introduced legislation in September 2023 that would repeal the law. The FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 found 47 sponsors in the House. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) subsequently introduced a companion bill in the U.S. Senate.

Roy stated at the time, "Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs. Yet Biden's Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life."

"Our Constitution separates power between the federal government and the states for a reason, and we ignore that safeguard at our own peril," continued the Texas congressman. "The FACE Act is an unconstitutional federal takeover of state police powers; it must be repealed."

'Republicans are going to have to get the nerve to actually stand up.'

Lee noted in an X thread earlier this year, "The FACE Act criminalizes an odd assortment of offenses, including blocking access to and vandalizing (1) abortion clinics, (2) places of worship, and (3) pregnancy centers. How many prosecutions has Team Biden brought in the second category? Zero. Not even one."

"The FACE Act, it seems, is being used by DOJ to punish pro-life protesters but not their pro-abortion counterparts," wrote Lee. "In enacting the FACE Act, moreover, Congress relied on now difficult-to-defend readings of both the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. I suspect most of the Republicans who voted for the FACE Act in 1994 would've voted differently had they anticipated the one-sided manner in which it would be enforced by DOJ."

Roy, who has repeatedly called for the the House GOP to take up his bill in the months since, told the Daily Signal this week, "Obviously, we need to move the bill forward, and it would be critical because of what we're seeing with respect to the persecution of Americans being put in jail."

"I think with the trifecta, we should be able to pass it," said Roy. "We should bring it forward. But look, Republicans are going to have to get the nerve to actually stand up for both free speech and life."

Although it is up to lawmakers to axe the FACE Act, President-elect Donald Trump suggested in a June 22 speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition that he will pardon peaceful pro-life activists such as Paulette Harlow upon taking office.

In May, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton-appointed judge who chastised a nun for daring to make the sign of the cross in court, sentenced Harlow to 24 months in prison. Harlow, an elderly woman suffering from a debilitating medical condition, was among the pro-life activists convicted for blocking access on Oct. 22, 2020, to the Washington Surgi-Clinic, operated by the late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo.

“Paulette is one of many peaceful pro-lifers who Joe Biden has rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams, and thrown them in jail," said Trump. "Many people are in jail over this. … We're going to get that taken care of immediately — [on the] first day."

Trump noted further that upon taking office, his administration would "rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who's unjustly victimized by the Biden regime, including Paulette, so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong."

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'I'm prepared to die': Biden-Harris DOJ celebrates concentration camp survivor's felony conviction over pro-life advocacy



The Biden-Harris Department of Justice got what it wanted last week when a federal jury all but guaranteed that concentration camp survivor 89-year-old Eva Edl would do prison time for peacefully protesting a variant of the dehumanization she thought she escaped when immigrating to America after World War II.

Edl told nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck Wednesday that she is ready to die in prison for daring to do what many proved reluctant to do early in the 20th century: stand up for vulnerable human beings deemed unfit for life.

"As a child, when I was pushed in that cattle car and nearly choked to death because we were so tightly put together — well, I wish that somebody in my country would have loved Jesus enough to risk their own freedom or even their lives and gathered in front of that train, stood on those railroad tracks to keep us from being shipped in there," said Edl.

"Well, this is basically what I'm doing," continued Edl. "When I stand in front of those clinic doors, I'm just buying time for our sidewalk counselors to reach women in a calm and quiet way and touch their hearts."

'This was the land of the free and the brave.'

Blaze News previously reported that at age 9, Edl was thrown into one of communist dictator Josip "Tito" Broz's concentration camps in Yugoslavia along with thousands of other Danube Swabians who had been collectively branded as Nazi collaborators by Tito's communist Partisans and targeted for their German ethnic backgrounds.

"At the end of the war, the communists came in," Edl told Beck. "They decided to just say, 'Because you are of an ethnic background of a certain evil group, ... your blood is already evil. So even if you're a newborn baby, you are evil in itself and have to be exterminated.' And that was their excuse."

Edl suggested that the motivation behind such bloodletting both then and now is really greed. However, it is often masked by ideology and pseudoscience.

"Our natural mind can justify anything our evil hearts want to do," said Edl.

She suffered the consequences of such twisted justifications, losing all of the skin on her legs in camp Gakowa, where she was also hobbled by sores.

"People gagged when they came near me," she said. "The flies and the fleas and the lice and the bed bugs just loved this festering body."

Edl and her remaining family members managed to escape to Austria, then bounced around various European refugee camps before moving to the United States.

When asked by Beck whether she ever envisioned facing prison in America, Edl answered, "No, no. When I came here, I was so idealistic. This was the land of the free and the brave."

"I thought if I ever ended up in court, all I would have to do is explain my situation," continued Edl. "I found out very differently."

A federal judge found Edl guilty of a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act earlier this year for staging a peaceful protest inside the Carafem abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, on March 5, 2021. The protest involved songs and prayer in support of those persons who had been and would be slain deep inside the slaughterhouse.

Edl explained to Beck the strategy anti-abortion activists have settled upon, despite its obvious legal risks:

I was a sidewalk counselor for many years and a rescuer, but when you're so far away from the women as they jump out of the car, you only have a few seconds, but you have to shout in order to be heard, which sounds like you're screaming at them. But by standing in front of the door and buying time for our sidewalk counselors to approach women, it's much more effective, I believe, and women get help, and there are many that are just grateful afterwards that we were there and kept them from murdering their own babies.

On Aug. 20, Edl was convicted in a separate case for supposedly obstructing access to an abortion clinic in Saginaw, Michigan, on April 16, 2021.

According to the Biden-Harris DOJ, "The evidence proved that Edl and Idoni violated the FACE Act by using physical obstruction to interfere with the clinic's employees and patients because the clinic was providing, and patients were seeking, reproductive health services."

'Have mercy on this nation.'

The DOJ, which has its own pro-abortion task force, deemed the result a "victory" and assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division went further, thanking the jury and vowing to "continue to hold accountable those that oppress the free exercise" of the supposed right to obtain an abortion.

"These defendants orchestrated an unlawful clinic blockade and physically obstructed patients seeking access to their doctors, without regard to the serious medical needs of the women they blocked from accessing reproductive health care," Clarke said in a statement. "We thank the jury for the [sic] time, attention, and careful consideration of the facts of this case."

U.S. attorney Dawn N. Ison for the Eastern District of Michigan stated, "This case is about the rule of law, and today's verdict is a victory for that principle."

Facing jail time for playing her part in the implementation of this strategy, Edl told Beck, "I'm prepared to die in there, and I'm not afraid, really."

"I believe in the Lord Jesus. I have eternal life now in him," continued Edl. "So why would I be afraid? The main reason I'm doing what I'm doing is simply in obedience to him. He said in John 14, he said: 'He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.' And I love him and therefore I keep his commandments.'"

Beck, visibly moved by Edl remarks, asked that she lead the show and its audience in prayer.

Edl obliged him saying, "Lord, we humbly come in the name of Jesus. Lord, our nation is in dire trouble. Lord God, we are ripe for judgment, Lord, and if we don't change, you have to judge us because the blood of these innocents that have been murdered throughout the years — not just 60 million [but] many more — Lord, innocent blood cries out for justice, and Lord, there is still no repentance in our nation."

"Father, I just pray: in your mercy, give us a spirit of humility and repentance before you. Let your church arise and love you, Jesus, by obeying you, Lord," continued the concentration camp survivor. "Lord, we ask you, in Jesus' name, Father, that you will shake our consciences and bring us into obedience before you, Lord, and have mercy on this nation."

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Democrats claim Trump will weaponize the DOJ and FBI. These 3 realities suggest that's mere projection.



Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) told fellow travelers at the Democratic National Convention Monday, "Donald Trump would be able to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents! He could even turn the FBI into his own personal police force!"

"That is not how it works in America," added McMorrow.

This provocative claim — that President Donald Trump will weaponize the Department of Justice and the FBI against his political opponents — has been recycled numerous times by Democrats in recent months.

While Trump certainly has a history of suggesting in speeches that various Democratic officials should be "locked up" over their alleged improprieties, actions taken by the Biden-Harris administration have alternatively provided Americans with concrete examples of what precisely it is that Democrats fear will happen if and when the tables are turned.

What follows is a look at Democrats' rhetoric and record when it comes to the weaponization of federal law enforcement against their foes.

It is abundantly clear from the approach taken by the Biden-Harris DOJ and the FBI toward Trump allies, pro-lifers, and Trump himself that to realize Democrats' fears of weaponization, the Republican need only replicate their behavior.

Jail for thee, but not for me

Former Attorney General Eric Holder is among the various prominent Democrats to push the weaponization line. He told MSNBC talking head Joy Reid earlier this year, "A second Trump term would have a politicized, weaponized — forget politicized — weaponized United States Department of Justice."

"You have a president who is beyond the reach of law. You have a Justice Department that goes after political opponents on absolutely no basis. He's going to prosecute Joe Biden. Well, exactly for what? That's not going to bother them," said Holder. "You would have a United States of America that would be unrecognizable to us; that would be one that you would see more in Putin's Russia as opposed to the United States that we have come to all know and love."

It appears that Holder, like other Democrats, was largely engaging in projection. After all, just days after Holder made these remarks, Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House adviser, was sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress.

'The department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law.'

The Biden-Harris FBI investigated Navarro's case and the DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland prosecuted it.

An entirely different approach had previously been taken in the case of Holder, who was held in contempt of Congress in an overwhelming 255-67 vote in 2012 for refusing to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.

The Obama DOJ let Holder skate, ostensibly for keeping former President Barack Obama's documents from the American people's elected representatives.

A different approach was also taken by the Biden-Harris DOJ this summer when it came to tackling Merrick Garland's own contempt of Congress.

The House voted 216-207 on June 12 to find the Biden appointee in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with lawful congressional subpoenas. Like Holder, Garland was unwilling to divulge potentially damaging materials linked to his Democratic president.

The DOJ subsequently made clear it would not prosecute Garland.

Weeks after the DOJ indicated it would not hold its own accountable, former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon reported to prison over 2021 contempt of Congress charges.

At the time the charges were filed, Garland said in a statement, "I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law."

Disproportionately targeting pro-lifers

The Biden-Harris DOJ has made no secret of its pro-abortion bias, having gone so far as to create a "Reproductive Rights Task Force" to help advance radicals' abortion agenda.

This bias and the corresponding weaponization of the department against the administration's opponents on the issue became especially clear in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, when scores of pro-life pregnancy centers, hundreds of Catholic churches, and various other pro-life institutions were attacked by leftist radicals.

Although in many cases the pro-abortion group Jane's Revenge claimed responsibility for firebombings and other attacks, the Biden-Harris DOJ — which was simultaneously attempting to force pro-life pharmacies to traffic abortion drugs — refrained from designating it a terrorist group.

As for the slew of individuals who executed the attacks on pro-life institutions, it appears only a handful were ultimately prosecuted. Those who were targeted by the DOJ appear to have been treated with kid gloves, as in the case of one pro-abortion domestic terrorist to whom prosecutors agreed to give a light sentence in April.

'It is very clear that the Biden Justice Department has politicized and weaponized the FACE Act to go after pro-life Christians.'

The Biden-Harris DOJ has taken an entirely different approach to peaceful pro-life activists, oftentimes seeking heavy sentences.

According to the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, "the DOJ brought at least 26 charges against pro-life individuals under the FACE Act in 2022. What were the total number of charges against abortion activists who obstructed or vandalized pro-life pregnancy centers in the wake of the Dobbs decision that year? Zero."

The Washington Post indicated a year later that the department had continued with this lop-sided application of the law.

The DOJ, which has shown no signs of stopping its round-up of ideological opponents, announced Tuesday that seven of the pro-life activists it charged for staging a peaceful 2020 protest at an abortion clinic in Michigan have been convicted of civil rights offenses. Among them is Eva Edl, an elderly Christian woman who survived a communist concentration camp in post-war Yugoslavia and committed her life to fighting similar dehumanization.

Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, told Fox News Digital earlier this year, "It is very clear that the Biden Justice Department has politicized and weaponized the FACE Act to go after pro-life Christians praying outside of abortion clinics like Mark Houck while turning a blind eye to violent felons terrorizing and badly damaging Catholic churches like Maeve Nota."

Blaze News previously reported that Mark Houck, a father of seven and Catholic — a denomination whose members the FBI has targeted with "counterterrorism tools" — was arrested at gunpoint by multiple FBI agents after he shoved a Planned Parenthood "escort" who repeatedly tried to antagonize him and his son in October 2021.

"The Biden Justice Department tried to put Houck in prison for 11 years for defending his son while recommending no jail time for Nota after this deranged trans terrorist badly damaged a Catholic church, fought with the police, assaulted a church employee, and scared the hell out of a little old lady praying," Davis added.

Attorneys for Houck noted in the lawsuit he filed in May against the DOJ and FBI his arrest was "a shocking display of the political animus against the pro-life movement harbored at the highest levels of the Department of Justice."

Trying to take out Trump

The Biden-Harris DOJ has done its best to kneecap Trump ahead of the 2024 election.

Whereas the DOJ would ultimately take a deferential approach when investigating Biden over his admitted transport and possession of classified documents, Garland signed off on the August 2022 raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence by armed agents.

Despite the similarities between the allegations in the cases, of the two, only Trump was ultimately charged.

Although the Biden-Harris DOJ appeared keen on sticking Trump with 37 counts and potentially decades worth of prison time, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon determined that Garland unlawfully appointed Jack Smith as counsel and that Smith had no authority to bring the case.

The DOJ opened a separate investigation in November 2022, looking to slam Trump for supposed election interference in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021, as well as on that fateful day former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admittedly dropped the ball on Capitol security. Again, Garland tapped Jack Smith to take lead, and again Smith's handiwork resulted in a grand jury indictment, this time in the majoritively Democratic District of Columbia.

The case is presently in limbo, in part thanks to the July 1 Supreme Court determination that Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for various actions taken as president.

There has been some suggestion that the Biden-Harris DOJ also put its thumb on the scales in New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's (D) prosecution of former President Trump in the person of former senior Biden-Harris DOJ official Matthew Colangelo.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told Blaze Media co-founder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck in late May, "The Biden Department of Justice has become a nerve center for a coordinated witch hunt prosecution of a political opponent, and it's not designed to obtain a legally valid conviction. It's designed to take anyone running against Joe Biden — in other words, president Donald Trump — off the campaign trail."

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Christopher Wray Says FBI Does Not Target Peaceful Pro-Lifers. The Stats Prove Otherwise

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-24-at-12.18.28 PM-e1721841652975-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-24-at-12.18.28%5Cu202fPM-e1721841652975-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]The FBI director’s comments prove Americans are right not to trust the nation’s premier law enforcement agency or its DOJ partner.

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