At her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said that if confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, she will work with Congress to investigate what she called the weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice against people of faith.
US Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, raised the issue saying, “for the last four years, [the Biden] administration has carried out an unprecedented attack and campaign against people of faith. If you look at the numbers, we’ve never seen anything like it before in American history. It has been one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department and in the history of the FBI. I hope that you will reverse this and do right by every American citizen, including especially people of faith.”
Hawley said that in mid-2022, attacks by abortion activists increased against a range of prolife targets and U.S. Supreme Court justices ahead of the Supreme Court overturning the landmark abortion case, Roe v Wade. At the time, protesters were targeting justices homes and 25 attorneys general. U.S. senators called on the DOJ to enforce a federal law prohibiting anyone from targeting judges’ homes, The Center Square reported.
More than 100 pregnancy care centers and 300 churches were attacked, vandalized and firebombed, but the DOJ only prosecuted two cases, Hawley said.
While Biden’s DOJ didn’t prosecute the majority of violent offenders, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody did. In one case, her office sued Antifa and Jane’s Revenge activists who attacked Florida prolife centers, and won, The Center Square reported.
The Biden Justice Department wouldn’t “lift a finger to defend [prolife] Americans but at the same time they used … the Face Act to prosecute at least 53 different pro-life demonstrators,” Hawley said.
He pointed to the DOJ in 2021 sending a SWAT team to arrest Pennsylvania prolife advocate Mark Houck. Houck was arrested “in threatening form, after nearly breaking down the family’s front door, at least five agents pointed guns at Mark’s head and arrested him in front of his wife and seven young children, who were terrified that their husband and father would be shot dead before their eyes,” his Thomas More Society attorney said. The FBI claimed the practice was standard and what was reported was “overstated.” Last year, a federal jury acquitted Houck of all charges.
“This kind of outrageous disparate treatment has to end,” Hawley said. He asked Bondi, “Will you protect churches and pregnancy care centers when they are targeted for violence, when they are targeted for intimidation, when … parishioners are threatened with violence or other acts of illegal behavior?
“Will you stop the disparate treatment of Americans on the basis of religious faith” and “stop the deliberate persecution of pro-life Americans for nothing more than their pro-life beliefs? Will you ensure that nothing like the Mark Houck case happens again that Americans do not have SWAT teams arriving on their front doors with armed weapons to terrorize their children and their spouses?”
Bondi said she would.
Hawley also addressed a comment Bondi made about the need to investigate “bad investigators,” citing a Jan. 23, 2023, FBI Richmond, Virginia, field office memo. The memo describes an FBI plan “to put assets into Catholic parishes, into choirs,” Hawley said. “This is an unbelievable assault on American’s First Amendment rights. We only know of it because of a brave whistleblower who came forward and released it to us.”
“I have never been misled and lied to like I was by the current attorney general and the now former FBI director when they sat right where you’re sitting now and told this committee, ‘Oh, we don’t know anything about it. Oh, only one field office was involved,’” Hawley added.
Hawley said his office learned that multiple field offices and FBI staff were involved. He asked Bondi if she will end the DOJ practice of using resources “to try and recruit informants and spies into Christian churches or any church or house of worship in this country on the basis of nothing more than faith.”
Bondi said she would.
Hawley also said that no one at the FBI who wrote the memo or implemented it “has been disciplined or fired.” He said he wants to know who signed off on it and advocated for it. He asked Bondi if she will investigate it, referring to it as “one of the worst abuses of Department of Justice and FBI authority in our history.”
“I think what you’re talking about is the ultimate weaponization what we’ve been discussing all day,” Bondi replied. “If I’m confirmed as attorney general, one of the first things I will do … I will personally read that memo” and discuss it with the next FBI chief.
Hawley also asked her if she’d work with the committee, including a subcommittee he will be chairing, to investigate what he said were the abuses of the Biden DOJ and FBI “to make sure the American people get all the facts and this never happens again.”
Bondi said she would, adding, “I would think this is something that we can all agree on, on both sides, that this should not be happening in the United States of America.”
