How Biden Weaponized the DOJ Against Christians
Just when you thought Joe Biden could sink no lower, it turns out his administration was colluding with NGOs to target Christian pro-life activists.
We may have a sophomoric president who posts narcissistic pictures of himself on social media, but at least he defends the preborn.
Donald Trump’s predecessor was a professing Christian who belied his supposed convictions. “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion,” Joe Biden told supporters at a 2023 fundraiser. “But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”
Well, just when you thought Biden could not get any more partisan or corrupt, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice just released a 900-page dossier documenting the collusion, pro-abortion bias, and corruption that happened under Biden’s DOJ.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, recall the string of attacks directed at pro-life centers, many of which were either slow-walked or ignored by Attorney General Merrick Garland. The AG, in fact, used the overturning of Roe to revive the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers.
This task force operated under the supervision of Sanjay Patel in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Patel, who was fired on Monday, was in frequent contact with organizations like the National Abortion Federation (NAF), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Feminist Majority Foundation. These non-governmental organizations (NGOs), particularly the NAF, would give Patel sometimes very detailed and personal information on pro-life activists.
These pro-life activists were later charged with FACE Act violations. Mark Houck was one of the victims, but there were others, including Calvin Zastrow, his daughter Eva Zastrow, Coleman Boyd, Dennis Green, Heather Idoni, James Zastrow, and Eva Edl, an 89-year-old communist death camp survivor.
The Zastrow family was a particular target of the pro-abortion NGOs; the dossier on them included pictures of their family and all sorts of personal information that those NGOs should not have. Calvin Zastrow is a Christian evangelical from Michigan who traveled frequently not only to spread the good news of the gospel but to participate in pro-life protests at abortion clinics.
Patel contacted the NAF and asked about Zastrow’s travel plans to Montana in the hopes of catching him on a FACE Act violation. Zastrow was later charged in connection with a different protest in Tennessee in 2022 and again in Michigan in 2023.
According to the New York Post, one of Zastrow’s cases “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.” Prosecutors also called Christian pro-lifers “culty.”
Zastrow was a NAF scalp, but one has to wonder: How long has this collusion and bias been going on at the federal level?
Paige Fitzgerald, an official at Biden’s DOJ, said this in an email to a federal ethics officer seeking help with a NAF grant: “We have worked with NAF for decades. NAF regularly refers potential FACE Act violations and other threats to RPCPs [Reproductive Healthcare Providers], helps us liaise with clinics and staff, lets us know about upcoming events that might result in security concerns so we can notify the FBI and USMS, etc. The information flow has always been a one-way street, and they have always been respectful, cooperative, and are frequently quite helpful.”
The NAF has been in a relationship with the DOJ for decades, though it is unclear if collusion has always been a part of that relationship.
This dossier shows proof that Biden’s DOJ was intentionally weaponizing the FACE Act to go after pro-life activists. It also shows that Biden’s DOJ ensured that pro-life violators got longer sentences than their pro-abortion counterparts. For example, one pro-abortion activist who threw a Molotov cocktail at a pro-life center was sentenced to 365 days in jail and seven years of probation. Prosecutors demanded an average of 26.8 months for the pro-life activists who were being sentenced.
After the Trump DOJ dossier came out, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated, “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice. 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.”
As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air opines, “This is entirely despicable. The Protection Racket Media has scoffed at the ‘weaponization of government’ investigation in Congress, but this is precisely what those probes targeted. This is a stunning abuse of power intended to target political opponents to intimidate them into silence.”
So much for the party of “No Kings” and “Save Our Democracy.” President Biden and his agencies abused power and targeted Christians, mothers, families, and pro-life advocates. The former president’s stooges have a lot to answer for.
