The FBI’s targeting of pro-life advocates made headlines last week.
As LifeNews has reported, Joe Biden’s Justice Department clearly targeted a pro-life man and his family with a shocking home raid as an act of persecution. Mark Houck became a victim of such targeting after more than 20 heavily-armed federal agents stormed his home at dawn on September 23 — frightening his family, pointing guns at his head, and then arresting him in front of his wife and seven young children.
Biden’s FBI has raided the home of the well-known pro-life advocate and arrested him on a bogus charge that had already been thrown out of court. Biden’s administration is coming under fire for weaponizing the FBI and Department of Justice to target pro-life conservatives.
Days later, FBI agents have questioned pro-life sidewalk counselors in St. Paul, Minnesota. This appears to be another fishing expedition in what pro-life Americans are concerned is a clear case of the Bide administration targeting pro-life Americans with more possible bogus charges in an attempt to silence pro-life people nationwide.
Now, reports are coming in that the agency is purging conservatives as the political targeting ramps up:
In recent weeks, we’ve also learned of the degree to which the FBI is cracking down on a small group of its own people — those whistleblowers who are fed up with the bureau’s unprecedented partisanship and have sought out and spoken to Republican senators and congressmen about it.
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Our Mark Alexander wrote about one of these whistleblowers — Special Agent Steve Friend, an FBI SWAT member and an eight-year veteran agent who is one of the more than 20 agents who’ve come forward to Congress with formal complaints about the bureau’s rot. In August, Friend — who, incidentally, did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election — was tasked with a SWAT raid against a January 6 riot suspect, but he refused because of what he believed to be the “overzealous” politicization of the J6 investigations leading to an ever-wider target list. “I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he told his superior. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.” For that, he was suspended, his credentials were seized, his security clearance was revoked, and he was escorted out of his Daytona Beach office building.
As for those other whistleblowers, they’re being targeted, too. To this end, Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to FBI executive assistant director of Human Resources Jennifer Moore.
“During the course of this investigation,” Jordan wrote, “we have received protected whistleblower disclosures that the FBI is engaging in a ‘purge’ of employees with conservative views by revoking their security clearances and indefinitely suspending these employees.” Jordan noted that many of those personnel actions had been signed by Moore, whom he said has “retaliated against at least one whistleblower who has made protected disclosures to Congress.”
“The law is clear,” Jordan said. “You don’t retaliate against whistleblowers. We’ve had multiple agents come to us and tell us about just how political the Justice Department has become.”
Naturally, the FBI is claiming this is not occurring.
“The FBI does not target or take adverse action against employees for exercising their First Amendment rights or for their political views. To allege otherwise is false and misleading. … [The FBI] takes very seriously its responsibility to FBI employees who may make protected disclosures under the whistleblower regulations.”
Either the bureau is lying, or these whistleblowers are lying and with the FBI targeting pro-life advocates, the possible purging is not a good look.
Whether a purge is happening or not, Republicans are livid with the agency for targeting a peaceful pro-life family.
Leading members of Congress have condemned the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the Houck case.
On Monday, Senator Josh Hawley sent Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter demanding answers on “shocking reports” of the arrest.
Hawley complained that pro-life advocates and conservatives are being “targeted by this administration.” He condemned the duplicity of targeting a peaceful pro-life advocate but essentially ignoring over 100 attacks on pro-life groups, pregnancy centers and churches.
“They’ll send a SWAT-style team to go after a Catholic pro-life activist. But at the same time, there are, what, 17 or more fire bombings, a pregnancy care centers that have not,” he said.
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“There are two systems and one is ideological. And if you are a conservative, if you are a person of faith, then you are going to get targeted by this administration,” he added.
“I want to know who signed off on this. I want to know exactly the person or group of people. And they need to be held accountable and be held accountable, I mean, removed from office,” said Hawley. “If that is Merrick Garland, he should be removed from office. It’s time to take the gloves off here and defend the rule of law.”
Hawley concluded with a message to the FBI and DOJ.
“Preserve your documents right now. Don’t delete anything because the Republican Congress is coming, and we are going to hold you accountable.”
With the help of pro-life attorneys during an appearance in federal court, Houck pleaded not guilty in Pennsylvania federal court to violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate and interfere with anyone trying to access either abortion at an abortion business or medical care at a pregnancy center.
Houck’s attorney, Peter Breen, said that the case already made its way through the state court process and was thrown out, but the Biden Department of Justice took up the matter nearly a year later as a form of “political prosecution.”
“If he was truly a danger to the community, they wouldn’t have waited a year to prosecute,” Breen, VP senior counsel of the Thomas Moore Society, said outside the courthouse. “Serious questions need to be asked of the Attorney General. What was he thinking? Why did they do this obscene show of force against a peaceful pillar of the community?”
“It put officers’ lives in danger. It put the Houck family in danger. And it was an utter waste of judicial resources and taxpayer resources,” Breen said.
