Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) told fellow travelers at the Democratic National Convention Monday, “Donald Trump would be able to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents! He could even turn the FBI into his own personal police force!”
“That is not how it works in America,” added McMorrow.
This provocative claim — that President Donald Trump will weaponize the Department of Justice and the FBI against his political opponents — has been recycled numerous times by Democrats in recent months.
While Trump certainly has a history of suggesting in speeches that various Democratic officials should be “locked up” over their alleged improprieties, actions taken by the Biden-Harris administration have alternatively provided Americans with concrete examples of what precisely it is that Democrats fear will happen if and when the tables are turned.
What follows is a look at Democrats’ rhetoric and record when it comes to the weaponization of federal law enforcement against their foes.
It is abundantly clear from the approach taken by the Biden-Harris DOJ and the FBI toward Trump allies, pro-lifers, and Trump himself that to realize Democrats’ fears of weaponization, the Republican need only replicate their behavior.
Jail for thee, but not for me
Former Attorney General Eric Holder is among the various prominent Democrats to push the weaponization line. He told MSNBC talking head Joy Reid earlier this year, “A second Trump term would have a politicized, weaponized — forget politicized — weaponized United States Department of Justice.”
“You have a president who is beyond the reach of law. You have a Justice Department that goes after political opponents on absolutely no basis. He’s going to prosecute Joe Biden. Well, exactly for what? That’s not going to bother them,” said Holder. “You would have a United States of America that would be unrecognizable to us; that would be one that you would see more in Putin’s Russia as opposed to the United States that we have come to all know and love.”
It appears that Holder, like other Democrats, was largely engaging in projection. After all, just days after Holder made these remarks, Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House adviser, was sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress.
‘The department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law.’
The Biden-Harris FBI investigated Navarro’s case and the DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland prosecuted it.
An entirely different approach had previously been taken in the case of Holder, who was held in contempt of Congress in an overwhelming 255-67 vote in 2012 for refusing to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.
The Obama DOJ let Holder skate, ostensibly for keeping former President Barack Obama’s documents from the American people’s elected representatives.
A different approach was also taken by the Biden-Harris DOJ this summer when it came to tackling Merrick Garland’s own contempt of Congress.
The House voted 216-207 on June 12 to find the Biden appointee in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with lawful congressional subpoenas. Like Holder, Garland was unwilling to divulge potentially damaging materials linked to his Democratic president.
The DOJ subsequently made clear it would not prosecute Garland.
Weeks after the DOJ indicated it would not hold its own accountable, former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon reported to prison over 2021 contempt of Congress charges.
At the time the charges were filed, Garland said in a statement, “I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law.”
Disproportionately targeting pro-lifers
The Biden-Harris DOJ has made no secret of its pro-abortion bias, having gone so far as to create a “Reproductive Rights Task Force” to help advance radicals’ abortion agenda.
This bias and the corresponding weaponization of the department against the administration’s opponents on the issue became especially clear in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, when scores of pro-life pregnancy centers, hundreds of Catholic churches, and various other pro-life institutions were attacked by leftist radicals.
Although in many cases the pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge claimed responsibility for firebombings and other attacks, the Biden-Harris DOJ — which was simultaneously attempting to force pro-life pharmacies to traffic abortion drugs — refrained from designating it a terrorist group.
As for the slew of individuals who executed the attacks on pro-life institutions, it appears only a handful were ultimately prosecuted. Those who were targeted by the DOJ appear to have been treated with kid gloves, as in the case of one pro-abortion domestic terrorist to whom prosecutors agreed to give a light sentence in April.
‘It is very clear that the Biden Justice Department has politicized and weaponized the FACE Act to go after pro-life Christians.’
The Biden-Harris DOJ has taken an entirely different approach to peaceful pro-life activists, oftentimes seeking heavy sentences.
According to the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, “the DOJ brought at least 26 charges against pro-life individuals under the FACE Act in 2022. What were the total number of charges against abortion activists who obstructed or vandalized pro-life pregnancy centers in the wake of the Dobbs decision that year? Zero.”
The Washington Post indicated a year later that the department had continued with this lop-sided application of the law.
The DOJ, which has shown no signs of stopping its round-up of ideological opponents, announced Tuesday that seven of the pro-life activists it charged for staging a peaceful 2020 protest at an abortion clinic in Michigan have been convicted of civil rights offenses. Among them is Eva Edl, an elderly Christian woman who survived a communist concentration camp in post-war Yugoslavia and committed her life to fighting similar dehumanization.
Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, told Fox News Digital earlier this year, “It is very clear that the Biden Justice Department has politicized and weaponized the FACE Act to go after pro-life Christians praying outside of abortion clinics like Mark Houck while turning a blind eye to violent felons terrorizing and badly damaging Catholic churches like Maeve Nota.”
Blaze News previously reported that Mark Houck, a father of seven and Catholic — a denomination whose members the FBI has targeted with “counterterrorism tools” — was arrested at gunpoint by multiple FBI agents after he shoved a Planned Parenthood “escort” who repeatedly tried to antagonize him and his son in October 2021.
“The Biden Justice Department tried to put Houck in prison for 11 years for defending his son while recommending no jail time for Nota after this deranged trans terrorist badly damaged a Catholic church, fought with the police, assaulted a church employee, and scared the hell out of a little old lady praying,” Davis added.
Attorneys for Houck noted in the lawsuit he filed in May against the DOJ and FBI his arrest was “a shocking display of the political animus against the pro-life movement harbored at the highest levels of the Department of Justice.”
Trying to take out Trump
The Biden-Harris DOJ has done its best to kneecap Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
Whereas the DOJ would ultimately take a deferential approach when investigating Biden over his admitted transport and possession of classified documents, Garland signed off on the August 2022 raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence by armed agents.
Despite the similarities between the allegations in the cases, of the two, only Trump was ultimately charged.
Although the Biden-Harris DOJ appeared keen on sticking Trump with 37 counts and potentially decades worth of prison time, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon determined that Garland unlawfully appointed Jack Smith as counsel and that Smith had no authority to bring the case.
The DOJ opened a separate investigation in November 2022, looking to slam Trump for supposed election interference in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021, as well as on that fateful day former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admittedly dropped the ball on Capitol security. Again, Garland tapped Jack Smith to take lead, and again Smith’s handiwork resulted in a grand jury indictment, this time in the majoritively Democratic District of Columbia.
The case is presently in limbo, in part thanks to the July 1 Supreme Court determination that Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for various actions taken as president.
There has been some suggestion that the Biden-Harris DOJ also put its thumb on the scales in New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) prosecution of former President Trump in the person of former senior Biden-Harris DOJ official Matthew Colangelo.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told Blaze Media co-founder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck in late May, “The Biden Department of Justice has become a nerve center for a coordinated witch hunt prosecution of a political opponent, and it’s not designed to obtain a legally valid conviction. It’s designed to take anyone running against Joe Biden — in other words, president Donald Trump — off the campaign trail.”
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