AG Merrick Garland’s Reason Why DOJ Has Prosecuted Few Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Firebombers: They Are Bombing at Night

Susan Berry, PhD

Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland told Republican senators Wednesday that his Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more pro-life Americans for peaceful protests at abortion clinics than enraged anti-life terrorists firebombing pregnancy care centers and vandalizing churches because pro-life people conduct their activities during the day while the domestic terrorists are doing their bombing at night.

Garland appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) confronted him about the widely contrary approaches his DOJ has taken in prosecuting pro-life protesters, such as recently acquitted Mark Houck, and anti-life activists terrorizing pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and churches:

We’ve also seen across the country violent attacks … pregnancy centers by similar left wing terrorist groups, including one graffiti of a firebombed building, that said “Jane was here.” There had been attacks all over the country. And yet the Department of Justice has not brought these violent criminals to justice. You contrast that – if you’re a violent criminal and you attack a crisis pregnancy center that is not a priority in the Biden Department of Justice. Contrast that to Mark Houck, who is a pro-life activist. He’s a sidewalk counselor. And he had an altercation with someone who allegedly interfered with his son’s personal space and threatened his son and he pushed him. Now in an ordinary world, pushing someone would be, maybe, a simple misdemeanor assault, but not under the Biden Department of Justice. If you’re a pro-life activist, what can you expect? Well, in this instance, according to Mr. Houck’s wife, two dozen agents clad in body armor, and ballistic helmets and shields, and a battering ram showed up at his house pointing rifles at his family. Why do you send two dozen agents in body armor to arrest a sidewalk counselor who happens to be pro-life, but you don’t devote resources to prosecute people who are violently firebombing crisis pregnancies?

“It is a priority of the department to prosecute and investigate and find the people who are doing those fire bombings,” Garland responded. “They are doing it at night, in secret, so, and we have found one group, which we did prosecute – “

“You found one – how many have there been, how many attacks?” Cruz pressed him.

“There have been a lot, and, if you have any information specifically as to who those people are – “Biden’s attorney general replied, but Cruz turned the questioning, then, to whether Garland personally authorized the descent of the band of federal agents who reportedly showed up at Houck’s home to arrest him in front of his family.

“Decisions about how to do that are made at the level of the FBI agents on scene,” Garland said, appearing to deflect blame from himself.

“Did you know about it?” Cruz pressed him again.

“I did not know about it until the way you’re describing it, and my understanding is the FBI disagrees with that description,” Garland answered.

Biden’s attorney general told Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) that the FACE Act (The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994) “applies equally to efforts to damage, blockade clinics, whether pregnant resource, whether they are pregnancy resource centers, or whether they are an abortion center. It applies equally in both cases and we apply the law equally.”

Garland again repeated his claim his DOJ has not been able to prosecute the more than 80 attacks against pregnancy care centers and nearly 300 attacks against Catholic churches because these crimes are carried out at night:

I will say you’re quite right there are many more prosecutions with respect to the blocking of the abortion centers. But that is generally because they, those actions are taken in with photography at the time during the daylight, and seeing the person who did it is quite easy. The, those who are attacking the pregnancy resources centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night. In the dark.

As Debra Heine reported at American Greatness in August, Jane’s Revenge “has taken credit for vandalizing or firebombing over a dozen churches and pregnancy centers” since the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision in Dobbs last May.

Centers that have been attacked include CompassCare, a pro-life medical office and pregnancy center in Buffalo, New York; Oregon Right to Life in Keizer, Oregon; Clearway Clinic in Worcester, Mass., and Wisconsin Family Action in in Madison, Wisconsin, the report noted.

In taking credit for the firebombings, domestic terrorist group “Jane’s Revenge” vowed in May to use “increasingly extreme tactics to maintain freedom over our own bodies.”

“The hate group, which the Atlantic recently dismissed as ‘the Right’s New Bogeyman,’ has emphasized in its statements: ‘We are not one group, but many,’” Heine reported, adding, “There have been zero arrests of Jane’s Revenge extremists since their terror campaign against pro-life facilities began.”

“But there has been an attempt in the media to portray pro-life Catholics as dangerous extremists,” she wrote.

In February, whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI special agent, revealed at uncoverdc.com that the federal agency’s Richmond Division had released a “finished intelligence product dated January 23, 2023” that cited the disgraced leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to warn Virginians about Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” (RMVE) and “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin cited the document, which further described “RTCs” as “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council,” and a preference for attending Latin Mass.

The FBI’s Richmond Division has reportedly rescinded that memo following Seraphin’s exposé.

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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Background Photo “Wisconsin Family Action Office” by Wisconsin Family Action.

 

 

 

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One Thought to “AG Merrick Garland’s Reason Why DOJ Has Prosecuted Few Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Firebombers: They Are Bombing at Night”

  1. Tim Price
    March 3, 2023 at 7:06 am

    So the FBI can not investigate crimes that happen at night?

    Boy do I feel safe!

    NOT!

    Reply

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