Americans who are paying attention have been warning the Biden administration is handcuffing and jailing its political enemies, and now Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is bringing the receipts.
Roy, an outspoken lawmaker and Freedom Caucus member, is crediting his congressional staff for compiling data that underscores how the DOJ has turned the FACE Act into its weapon of choice.
Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1994. The FACE Act prohibits the use of force, threats or physical obstruction to interfere with any woman trying to obtain an abortion. Likewise, it prohibits interference with any individual exercising religious freedom at a place of worship and prohibits damage or destruction at an abortion clinic or place of worship. However, the religious liberty language in the text goes mostly ignored.
Numbers compiled by Roy’s staff show that since the bill became law, 205 of the 211 cases prosecuted under the FACE Act have been against pro-life people, six against pro-abortion people. That’s 97% of the federal cases.
Recent congressional testimony from FBI Director Chris Wray did little to earn trust from pro-lifers that they’re not being targeted, Roy said on Washington Watch Monday. “Christopher Wray, when he was in front of the House Judiciary Committee, he tried to dismiss my concerns when I raised the question about the application of the FACE Act to pro-life Americans and that it was being weaponized against them,” Roy told show host Jody Hice. Specifically, Wray soft-pedaled the case of Paulette Harlow, the 75-year-old Massachusetts grandmother and pro-life activist. She was sentenced to two years in prison for her part in a blockade of a Washington, D.C, abortion clinic in 2020. Eight others were also found guilty.
Harlow is scheduled to begin her sentence in Texas this week, Roy said. “The FBI director said he didn’t even know who Paulette Harlow was, the 75-year-old grandmother. He said, ‘I’m not even familiar with that case,’” Roy said. “Then he tried to turn around and said, ‘Oh, but don’t worry, we’ve been applying this equally,’ and he tried to cite some general data but didn’t give any numbers.”
Roy’s staff has collected very specific numbers, and they show that 97% of FACE Act cases have been against pro-life activists.
In the 30 years of the law, 25 percent of FACE Act cases have been prosecuted in 3 ½ years of the Biden administration. This is not a broad sweep of those who are simply political opponents, Roy said. It’s a very specific use of the FACE Act to target pro-lifers.
Not about targeting Republicans
Not all abortion opponents are conservatives. “There are some progressive activists who have also had this applied to them to get jail time,” Roy said.
One of those is Lauren Handy, one of the “Garland Nine” group that included Harlow. Josh Darnel, one of the protesters, filmed more than 90 minutes of the group’s blockade of the Washington Surgi-Clinic that included protesters chained together, singing hymns and refusing to leave, The National Catholic Register reported.
Handy’s Facebook page identifies her as the director of activism at Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. She directed the Surgi-clinic blockade, according to a DOJ statement. “The fact is, we’ve gotten this very specific set of data that 97 percent of these cases have been used against pro-life activists, not just conservatives, not just pro-life evangelicals. There are some progressive activists that have also had this applied to them and get jail time. That’s something that people need to understand that this is a religion to the Left. They don’t actually care who it gets applied to,” Roy said.
Weaponization of the DOJ means destruction of the rule of law, he added.
For the DOJ, the objective is not just convictions. It’s convictions with jail time, Roy said, and the punishment is not fitting the crime. “There are allegations of what happened when they went into the clinic, and maybe they pushed somebody down and so forth, but again these are misdemeanor-type offenses. If there’s a misdemeanor offense here to blocking a clinic, no matter what I think about the clinic, we understand the application of that law and the rule of law, but at the end of the day they’re trying to weaponize this specifically to put pro-life people in jail for a long time,” Roy said.
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