Parents Defending Education and America First Legal Release Report with New Details on Three-Year Anniversary of the Infamous AG Garland October 4th Memo Targeting American Parents and Exposing the Biden-Harris Administration’s War on Parents

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After three years and several investigations from Parents Defending Education (PDE), America First Legal (AFL), and the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the American public has yet to receive an apology or explanation from the Biden-Harris Administration for its involvement in attempting to violate the First Amendment by silencing concerned parents, nor has it rescinded Attorney General Garland’s baseless memorandum.  

Given the federal government’s failure to provide answers, PDE and AFL have worked to uncover the truth. Damning discoveries from the investigations include: 

• Attorney General Garland’s memo blindsided senior officials at the FBI, including the Counterterrorism Division, and the FBI wanted to “request [that] it be reworded”;
• Multiple actors within the Biden-Harris Administration from the DOJ and Department of Education swiftly coordinated and mobilized a response to NSBA’s letter to President Biden;
• Once drafted, the DOJ prioritized giving notice of the memo’s impending release to NSBA over its own components that were directed to take action (see report at pp. 9-10);
• Immediately after the memo became public, DOJ struggled to answer any foundational questions regarding what “specific events” or “specific groups or individuals” it was referencing in its directive;
• However, an attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division admitted that the memo was in response to pushback from parents on COVID policies and critical race theory (see report at p. 10);
• Nonetheless, seeing that the National School Boards Association (NSBA) was grateful to DOJ for “demonstrating such strong leadership on this critical issue,”  Chief of Staff to Attorney General Garland Matthew Klapper congratulated his team on the memo, saying “[w]ell done.”

Today, PDE, in partnership with AFL, released a report detailing the timeline and explaining the key officials involved in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s unfounded October 4, 2021 Memorandum that directed federal criminal and counterterrorism resources within the Department of Justice (DOJ), including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security Division, to target parents exercising their First Amendment right to free speech at local school board meetings to oppose Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology in the classroom. 

Some of the individuals involved in the rollout of this disastrous memo include multiple current and former Biden-Harris Administration officials like Kevin Chambers (formerly an Associate Deputy Attorney General), Mary C. Wall (former member of the White House Domestic Policy Council), Matthew Klapper (Chief of Staff to Attorney General Garland), Anthony Coley (former Director of DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs), and Margaret Goodlander (former Counsel to Attorney General Garland, married to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and current candidate for Congress in New Hampshire).

The infamous memo was a response to the NSBA’s September 29, 2021 letter to President Biden in which they requested counterterrorism resources, including the PATRIOT Act, to be used in response to parents protesting at school board meetings. Merely five days later, Attorney General Garland issued a sweeping mandate to federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the alleged “threats” that arose from parents voicing their concerns about critical race theory, mask mandates, and other controversial issues. This flagrant assault on the First Amendment is just one of the many ways the Biden-Harris Administration has weaponized the federal government against the American people.  

In an effort to shed light on this egregious assault on the Constitution and war against parents, AFL and PDE have assembled a detailed chronology of the events that led up to the October 4, 2021, Memorandum to remind America’s mothers and fathers of the Biden-Harris Administration’s unprecedented use of federal law enforcement resources that were weaponized against them three years ago today. 

AFL and PDE will continue to fight and uncover the truth behind the Biden-Harris Administration’s war on parents and protect their rights to free speech and protect their children. 

Statement from Nicole Neily, Parents Defending Education President and Founder: 

“Three years ago, parents who were justifiably unhappy about the quality of their children’s education began to use their voices and resources to demand better. Yet rather than listen and respond to these concerns, bureaucrats in Washington chose to weaponize the federal government to frighten, intimidate, and silence families, choosing to side with teachers’ unions and the education-industrial complex over students. No apology has ever been issued – nor has DOJ’s directive ever been rescinded – revealing this administration’s deeply held, ongoing contempt for hardworking American taxpayers,” said Nicole Neily.

Statement from Ian Prior, America First Legal Senior Advisor:

“In 2021, parents across America began exercising their Constitutional rights to hold their local school boards accountable for their policies and conduct during the pandemic. From keeping schools closed to demanding that children adopt without question radical political ideologies on race and gender, parents rightly challenged their elected officials and local school bureaucrats to focus on education, not controversial social experiments with children as the guinea pigs. Rather than recognize the problems and engage with parents, the Biden-Harris Administration offered up the Department of Justice to serve as taxpayer-funded law enforcement for the very special interests that were so threatened by parents wanting a say in their children’s education. The Garland Memo will go down in history as the legacy of Attorney General Garland and, worse, as a frightening weaponization of federal power by the Biden-Harris Administration to give the government complete power on how to ‘educate’ our children,” said Ian Prior.

Read PDE’s full coverage of the NSBA letter to President Biden and the Department of Justice Memo here.

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