Biden’s “Department of Justice” has made a mockery of justice. News recently broke that five pro-life activists members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) organization, were convicted of “felony conspiracy against rights” and “felony violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.”
The penalty for FACE violations is hefty — each of the defendants could face up to 11 years in prison as well as fines up to $350,000 for entering and blockading a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. They allegedly did so to protest the clinic’s abortionist Cesare Santangelo, who once admitted on video that he would let a baby die if it was born alive after a failed abortion – something forbidden by federal law. (RELATED: JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: Federal Government’s Appetite For Surveillance Is Truly Insatiable)
If the DOJ truly cared about promoting justice and the rule of law, they would investigate Santangelo, and they would employ the same zeal in tracking down and prosecuting pro-abortion FACE Act offenders.
They have utterly failed in doing so. There have been at least 189 attacks on Catholic churches and 88 attacks on pro-life organizations since the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, yet to date, less than 1% of these heinous crimes have resulted in federal charges.
These attacks were not paltry offenses. They were a vicious, targeted attempt to harass, threaten and impede the heroic and charitable work done by pro-life organizations, as well as Catholic churchgoers who are overwhelmingly pro-life. Clinics were firebombed, statues beheaded, windows smashed, and walls defaced with horrifying messages like “if abortions aren’t safe then neither are you.”
Domestic terrorist organization Jane’s Revenge even published a manifesto claiming credit for the crimes while calling for a “summer of rage,” following the Dobbs decision. Yet somehow, despite the violence and the plethora of modern technology that could easily help discover the perpetrators, the vast majority of these crimes remain unsolved and the victims unpunished.
This comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the way the DOJ and far-left activists turned a blind eye to the violence and unrest unleashed by Black Lives Matter rioters during the “summer of unrest” in 2020. Cars, homes and businesses were burned and ransacked, and lives were lost thanks to the rage of protestors.
Ironically, the very same DOJ trying to send pro-life advocates to prison for over a decade is now trying to reduce sentences for a BLM rioter who set a fire that killed a man. In their own words, the rioter was “caught up in the fury of the mob,” and thought his actions amounted to “the language of the unheard.”
Such inadequate and unequal application of the law raises serious red flags — especially when juxtaposed with the agency’s vigor in ruthlessly hunting down and mercilessly prosecuting pro-life advocates. For example, Biden’s DOJ sent a swarm of FBI agents to arrest pro-life advocate Mark Houck at gunpoint in front of his wife and children, even though Houck had offered to turn himself in when he learned of the bogus federal charges against him.
The DOJ’s subsequent persecution of Houck defied reason. The Catholic father of seven was forced to spend months and an enormous amount of money defending himself from an 11-year prison sentence and potential $350k fine — all because Houck had pushed a clinic worker who was harassing his son. Though Houck was ultimately proven innocent of the federal charges, the DOJ’s obsessive desire to ruin his life exposed the true guilty party: a government agency completely consumed by political bias.
That same bias currently protects the infamous abortion clinic and abortionist at the heart of the PAAU debacle: the Washington Surgi Clinic and Cesare Santangelo. Last year, PAAU discovered the mangled bodies of five fully formed babies, possibly victims of illegal partial birth abortions, tied to Santangelo and the Surgi Clinic.
To this day, Washington, D.C., police, the DOJ and many in the media protect Santangelo’s house of horrors by downplaying “the five,” accusing PAAU members of wrongdoing in their discovery of the bodies, and most recently by backing off their promised investigation into the Surgi Clinic altogether.
Far from bringing justice to bear, this barrage of political bias has obscured the truth about the abortionist responsible – a cold, dangerous late-term abortionist who is the subject of an active lawsuit alleging that a woman died with fetal debris in her lungs due to an abortion he performed. Imagine if the roles were reversed, and a pro-life organization committed even half of Santangelo’s atrocities. Sadly, pro-life organizations have been attacked for far less – such as offering women free resources, support, and alternatives to abortion.
Americans should not take this abuse of power lightly. Perhaps it doesn’t affect you right now, but the DOJ’s relentless persecution of even a progressive organization like PAAU serves as a chilling reminder that they will go after anyone who dares to deviate from any part of their liberal orthodoxy.
As Americans wake up to the double standard infecting our Justice system, I pray that they will find the necessary courage and fortitude to fight back for our once free, fair and just nation. We desperately need them to, because evil truly triumphs when good men do nothing.
Brian Burch is the President of CatholicVote.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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