The FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessments” involving parents after then-Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum on Oct. 4, 2021, addressing threats against school officials, according to the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group. The report said White House officials pressured Garland to issue the memo and that it “wrongly weaponized the Department of Justice against parents.”
A separate joint release from the Justice Department and Education Department described an investigation that began with a tip about a mother who owned a gun and belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group.” The joint release identified the group as Moms for Liberty. Co-founder Tina Descovich said parents involved with the organization became afraid to speak publicly after federal scrutiny of school board activists.
How the scrutiny began
After Garland’s memorandum, the FBI opened 25 assessments involving parents, the Working Group reported. The memo addressed threats against school officials, while the investigation described in the agencies’ joint release began with a tip about a mother’s gun ownership and membership in a group later identified as Moms for Liberty.
Justice Department personnel called the effort “ridiculous” in internal communications, raised First Amendment concerns and said it appeared political, the department’s press release said. Emails, according to the release, showed that Biden White House officials persuaded Garland to issue the memo. The Working Group concluded that the memo “was the product of pressure exerted by the White House and wrongly weaponized the Department of Justice against parents.”
Descovich said some parents received calls asking about their mental health and whether they had weapons at home. Those calls came after school board meetings, she said, and parents received case numbers and file numbers. “Parents were afraid to show up,” she said. Some members stood with the organization privately and silently, she added, but feared speaking out or losing their jobs.
Parents describe the consequences
Descovich said the report and the departments’ press release acknowledged the matter and declared parents weren’t domestic terrorists. She called the situation “absurd.” The headline, she said, was that the country was “returning to normalcy.”
She also said the memorandum’s “threat tag,” which she said was based on using the Patriot Act against parents attending school board meetings, “sent a chill through the country.” Her account ties federal scrutiny to parents’ reluctance to attend meetings or speak publicly; the report describes the assessments and the process that led to the memorandum.
After the report, Descovich said, Moms for Liberty felt “vindication.” “My reaction and our reaction at Moms for Liberty is vindication,” she told Fox News Digital. “We feel... we're finally being heard.” She said parents had been afraid to speak because of what the government did, and urged people not to forget where they were in 2021 as they went into the midterm elections.
Calls for accountability
“There needs to be accountability to a government that was out of control,” Descovich said. She called losing power and an election the first step, and said she hoped the current administration would take further steps to hold individuals accountable for driving what she called attacks against citizens.
Fox News Digital contacted the FBI and the White House for comment. The Department of Education referred the outlet to its press release and letter. The reported findings leave three central questions on the record: why federal assessments involved parents, what role White House pressure played in the memorandum, and who will be held accountable for the decisions described by the Working Group.