WASHINGTON — Senior Justice Department attorneys pushed back against the Biden administration’s effort to investigate parents who protested at school board meetings as possible domestic terrorists, describing the proposed criminal probes as “ridiculous” and overtly “political,” according to emails released Monday.
Messages obtained by the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group show lawyers in Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s office questioning the demand for federal investigations. The request came after the National School Boards Association urged the department to intervene, while the attorneys privately criticized the partisan impact the move could have.
“This is ridiculous,” one official in Monaco’s office wrote on Sept. 25, 2021.
Another attorney dismissed the initiative as “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
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“It’s like they’ve [sic] affirmatively trying to make this thing not work and look political,” a Justice Department official in the criminal division wrote on Oct. 2, 2021.
“If they do this they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force,” the official added.
The White House-backed effort followed a letter from NSBA President Chip Slaven, who warned that public schools faced an “immediate threat” from parents. Slaven wrote that incidents involving “malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” had increased and suggested that some of the conduct could amount to domestic terrorism and hate crimes.