Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to resign Wednesday over Garland’s support that the FBI and the Department of Justice investigate “violence” from parents at school boards.
“I’ll leave it at this, General Garland. You have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice, your U.S. attorneys are now collecting and cataloging all the ways that they might prosecute parents like Mr. [Scott] Smith because they want to be involved in their children’s education and they want to have a say in their elected officials. It’s wrong, it is unprecedented to my knowledge in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign,” Hawley said before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
WATCH:
The White House worked with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to produce a letter that compared concerned parents appearing at school board meetings to domestic terrorists. The NSBA has since apologized for the correspondence. ‘It’s Disgusting’: Greg Gutfeld Says Unprepared Attorney General Sounds Like He Gets His Information ‘From BuzzFeed’
“All I can conclude from this, is either that you’re not in control of your own department, or that more likely what I think to be the case, is that you knew full well that this is exactly the kind of thing that would happen when you issued your memo, when you involved the Department of Justice and and all of its resources and the FBI and all of its resources and local school boards and school districts, you knew that federal prosecutors would start collecting crimes that they could use against parents,” Hawley insisted.
“You knew they would advise state and local officials that these are all the ways parents might be prosecuted. You knew that was the likely outcome and that’s exactly what’s happened and we’re talking about parents like Scott Smith, who is behind me over my shoulder,” whom Hawley said was “forcibly restrained [and] arrested.”
Hawley said that the Scott attended a school board meeting “to raise the fact that his daughter was assaulted, sexually assaulted” in a girl’s bathroom by a biological male wearing a dress.
“Now you testified last week before the House, that you didn’t know anything about this case. I find that extraordinary, because the letter that you put so much weight on, the letter that’s now been retracted, it cites this case, it cites Mr. Scott’s case directly.”
The senator said Scott was physically thrown to the ground by the school board. He asked Merrick, “Do you think people like Scott Smith, you think parents who show up to complain about their children being assaulted ought to be treated like this man, right here?”
“People who show up to complain about school boards are protected by the First Amendment,” Garland contended.
“What they’re doing is complaining about what the school board is doing: policy, curriculum, everything else that they want to, as long as they are not committing threats of violence, they should not be prosecuted and they can’t be,” Garland continued.
Hawley shot back: “Several of my Democrat colleagues … in this hearing … have compared parents who show up at school board meetings, like Mr. Smith here, have compared them to criminal rioters, you think that’s right? ”
“I do not and I do not remember any senator here making the comparison,” Garland replied. (RELATED: Parents Announce ‘Not Domestic Terrorists’ Rally In Front Of The Justice Department)
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is sworn in before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Oct 27, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Justice Department will prioritize redlining investigations with Garland pledging the crackdown on discriminatory lending would be unprecedented in its aggressiveness. (Photo by Tom Brenner-Pool/Getty Images)
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know if Garland’s son-in-law was financially benefitting from his education company that promotes the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in schools. Garland refused to answer the question.
“The Biden DOJ has embraced Critical Race Theory. AG Garland’s son-in-law makes big money from a company involved in teaching CRT. So I asked the AG if he sought an ethics opinion. He refused to answer my question. Apparently ethics aren’t a high priority in the Biden admin,” Cruz said in a tweet.