Selective enforcement?

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 16th of April.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: Pro-lifers in the crosshairs.

The Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group released its first report this week, alleging that the Biden administration targeted pro-life Americans.

BROWN: The nearly 900 pages claim that the Justice Department unfairly used a 32-year-old civil rights law to go after pro-life activists.

WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta has the story.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act, makes it illegal to block access to houses of worship, crisis pregnancy centers, and abortion centers. Penalties range from misdemeanors to felonies carrying a decade of prison time. And on Tuesday, the Justice Department released the massive report, saying the Biden administration selectively used it against pro-life advocates

The DOJ’s weaponization working group reviewed more than 700,000 internal records implicating the Biden administration in partnering with pro-abortion groups to identify, track, and then arrest pro-life activists. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News:

BLANCHE: The Department of Justice was working very closely with outside organizations to actually target individuals that were just had different views from that outside organization.

According to emails included in the report, several DOJ attorneys received dossiers on pro-life activists from the National Abortion Federation. Text messages revealed one attorney complained about a Catholic judge. The report also alleges the DOJ tried to screen Christians out of juries on FACE Act cases and sought harsher-than-normal sentences compared to pro-abortion activists.

BLANCHE: This is about the department of justice working hand in hand with outside organizations that were their sole mission was to go after individuals who were pro-life and the department of justice took that information, used it as part of their ongoing investigations and prosecutions.

During the Biden administration, 46 pro-life advocates were charged with felonies under the FACE Act. More than half were convicted, and then pardoned by Trump.

Some of the emails between lawyers and pro-abortion groups began in 2020, during the first Trump administration. On Tuesday, a Justice Department spokesperson said personnel have been fired… but did not say how many. Two assistant U.S. attorneys out of the Eastern District of Michigan confirmed to the Detroit Free Press that they had been fired. One said she was proud of her service and maintained she upheld the law.

Blanche pushed back during his interview on Tuesday with NBC News:

BLANCHE: We have never and will never fire somebody for just doing their job. However, every lawyer and every prosecutor knows that they take an oath just like I did, and if they violate that oath, there should be consequences.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told me he wants to see more accountability from the DOJ.

HAWLEY: We need to have further hearings on this issue to expose it. And you know, we need, if necessary, we need to consider a change in the law to stop this abuse.

For years, pro-life advocates have petitioned the government to repeal the FACE Act, arguing it could be leveraged against them during a future administration. But there has not yet been movement during the Trump administration to do so. Here’s Hawley again:

HAWLEY: I tend to think that it probably can't be salvaged. It'd be better just get rid of it, but at the very least it has got, there's got to be protections for pro lifers, people of faith, and it needs to be if we're going to use it, then we need to be prosecuting people who deface churches, who try to blow up Pregnancy Care Centers, obviously the last administration didn't do it all.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department charged 39 protesters with a FACE Act misdemeanor for demonstrating inside a Minneapolis church. Here’s what U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told NewsNation in January:

DHILLON: Even though protection of houses of worship is an equal part of that statute, the DOJ hasn't used it before. And so we're using it now…

When asked about the report and the president's position on repealing the FACE Act, the White House would not comment directly, directing me back to the DOJ. Since releasing its report, the DOJ vacated FACE Act convictions for all the pro-life activists listed.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta…in Washington.

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