WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden “withheld evidence” and approved “aggressive arrest tactics” when targeting pro-life defendants — and then slapped them with longer prison sentences than pro-abortion ones, according to an explosive internal review released Tuesday.
The DOJ revealed the stunning abuses in a nearly 900-page report after examining more than 700,000 records related to the Biden administration’s prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
The 1994 law was passed to protect access to houses of worship, religious institutions, abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers.
But the Biden DOJ was found to have engaged multiple times in “biased enforcement” of it — while also collaborating with and even seeking to fund pro-abortion groups, according to the DOJ Office of Legal Policy report.
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland set up a national task force to pursue cases against pro-lifers the month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Emails show the task force, led by civil division trial attorney Sanjay Patel, worked closely with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Abortion Federation’s Security Team to initiate investigations and “monitor” pro-life activists — sometimes for years — before requesting arrest warrants and filing charges.
In a Nov. 17, 2021, email, before the task force was launched, Patel had already praised NAF’s security director, Michelle Davidson, to colleagues as an “MVP” at “bringing incidents to my attention, often in real-time, which usually result in an investigation/prosecution.”
The task force director was not nearly as chummy with defense counsel for one of the first pro-lifers indicted for illegally blocking access to an abortion clinic after the Dobbs decision, writing in a Feb. 22, 2023, email that he didn’t “keep the kind of records” the lawyer requested about the total number of “prosecutions for vandalisms of pregnancy centers.”
That was false, the Trump DOJ review found, since he had already forwarded “substantially identical information” to NAF.
Another case, US v. Zastrow, saw Biden DOJ prosecutors seeking “an indirect way to get some more info about religion without directly asking it,” leading to a handful of Christian jurors being flagged “for peremptory and for-cause strikes from the jury pool because of their faith,” according to draft voir dire documents and the subsequent review.
Other draft documents from the Biden-era prosecutors referred to Christian pro-lifers as “culty” — before swapping out a less offensive term so as to appeal to the Catholic magistrate judge, who they griped had taken up the case.
“Unfortunately, we ended up with a very Catholic magistrate on duty this week and he was very particular about the bond conditions and not infringing on their first amendment rights,” Assistant US Attorney Frances Lee Carlson wrote in a March 10, 2023, email.
Patel also prodded his team following a Planned Parenthood referral to pursue what looked “like a good felony FACE matter” involving pro-life activist Mark Houck, per an Oct. 18, 2021, email on the day that he shoved an employee for the abortion advocacy group who harassed his son.
More emails the following month point to Patel pushing for the indictment even as civil division attorneys expressed reservations — and did so again the following year in an Aug. 10, 2022, email that admitted there were still “litigation risks.”
Houck, a Catholic father of seven, was later arrested in September 2022 by 16 armed FBI agents — some of whom were carrying long guns — at his home in rural Pennsylvania and charged with two FACE Act-related counts.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had declined to pursue a summons allow him to self-surrender, but the public backlash caused Patel to place blame on the FBI.
The task force director claimed the “main reason” for the public show of force was “in hope of seizing phones” pursuant to search warrants, an Oct. 4, 2022, email disclosed.
“I think the unspoken reason is bc the FBI really likes to make arrests,” Patel added.
The Biden DOJ also liked to seek higher prison sentences against pro-lifers charged with non-violent FACE Act violations.
On average, its prosecutors sought 26.8 months in prison for pro-life defendants, compared with 12.3 months averaged for pro-abortion ones.
Judges also sentenced those pro-lifers at higher rates, 14 months to 3 months.
President Trump, on his third day in office, signed pardons for 23 pro-lifers convicted of FACE Act violations under the prior administration, many of whom he said were “elderly” and should not have been prosecuted.
Houck was acquitted by a federal jury in January 2023 and later reached a settlement with the Biden DOJ
“This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Tuesday. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs.”
“The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system,” he added.
As a result of the lengthy review, the DOJ may also refer prosecutors or other employees currently facing internal misconduct probes for criminal prosecution, bar associations or other authorities.
“Here, internal referrals have been made as required by the Justice Manual,” the report stated.
Patel was fired Monday, a source familiar with his exit told The Post. CBS News first reported on his departure along with three other federal prosecutors involved in FACE Act cases under Garland.
“The behavior unearthed in this report is shameful,” said Office of Legal Policy Assistant Attorney General Daniel Burrows.
“Lawyers who should have known better withheld evidence, worked to keep committed religious people off juries, and generally allowed the Department of Justice to be used as the enforcement arm of pro-abortion special interests.”
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